Schism
by sodakey
Summary: They all have demons.  Some are just bigger than others, some louder, some more real.  And even Adam Beaudreaux cannot kill them all.  Multi-chapter fic.  Grady, Beaudreaux, Miguel, Malloy.  Gen.
1. Chapter 1

_Warnings: S_ome potentially disturbing imagery. Some violent imagery. Mainly in chapter two. More than typical for me. I understand everyone rates what may be personally disturbing at different levels, so while some may feel this warning could be overkill, I don't want anyone walking into something they'd rather avoid. Also, anything beyond this sentence will be fraught with spoilers. Too many to be specific about. The story itself stands on the assumption that readers will have a basic understanding of the characters and of the show's premise before venturing through. It is likely that readers going in blind would be able to piece things together in context without too much difficulty, or could find a quick episode guide that would lay out the characters nicely enough, nevertheless, that is my warning. Also. Flying without a net here. No beta.

_Random Notes:_ Posting _Street Justice_ fan fiction has never been on my life's list of necessary accomplishments, or even unnecessary accomplishments. However, a while back when a friend reintroduced me to this obscure little show, and since I process most tv input by writing random bits of fiction—most of which never see the light of day—this story came about. A few months back, after sifting through documents recovered from a crashed computer, I found it again, pulled the pieces together and decided, what the hell. So, here it is. It's nothing fancy. On the whole a fairly straightforward fan fiction, utilizing some common fan fiction tropes—tropes the show itself used repeatedly. There's nothing particularly groundbreaking about the writing. And it's surprisingly long for an audience of… well, pretty much just me. But in case one or two others out there might enjoy it. Bon apatite.

_Story Specific and Show Related Notes:_

Before re-watching the episodes, I'd had only vague memories of the premise. Though essentially an 80's/90's formula show, I enjoyed the idea of four very different people finding common connections and building a pseudo family around those connections. While the execution in some episodes was awkward—and the prison episode kept making me wonder when Grady and the other prisoners were going to break into their own rendition of _Please, Mr. Jailer_—the overall concept was pretty awesome.

In the midst of that awesomeness, I did learn quickly that_ Street Justice_ is a show in which continuity was definitely optional. It doesn't just invite AU-ish fan interpretation, it demands it. The show contradicts itself so many times, the audience must bend the space/time continuum for any of the characters' individual chronological histories to work. I'm going to highlight three examples, simply because they relate to this story, but there are many more that could harm your mind if you're not careful.

One. Grady was supposedly in a Vietnamese prison for ten years somewhere between the time Adam left him at age eight and when they were reunited. However, at age nine he was in an orphanage, and at age seventeen he was in a refugee camp in Hong Kong, making his way to North America shortly thereafter. There's just no way to fit ten years into that. We could assume he lied, I suppose, or that we all misheard the dialog, but for the purpose of this story, I'm going with the premise that, though not for ten years, Grady was in prison in Vietnam for a very specific amount of time.

Two. When, where, and how Grady learned martial arts is its own mindbender. I lost track of the gaps and contradictions as I watched. In this story, I do touch on it, and have therefore invented my own continuity. Parts of some episodes will support my insinuations, parts of others will need to be ignored.

Three (my favorite). Grady's parents were killed in 1973. He was eight. Adam left Grady at age eight after Grady had spent nearly a year in his care. Adam then searched for him for twenty years, reuniting with him in 1991. So, really, eighteen years. More likely, seventeen years. If Grady was eight-almost-nine when they separated, after twenty years, he would be twenty-eight. But if he were eight in 1973, he would have been twenty-six when they reunited. The second season saves this one a little by having Adam say it was "nearly" twenty years. It's not really a big deal, I suppose, but for the purpose of this story, I'm going with the "nearly" option.

**/**

**Schism**

**\**

The recurring nightmare had stopped being a nightmare the moment Grady had finally showed up in his life again. Alive. Grown. Relatively intact. Adam had thought that would be the end of it. No more glass box trapping him motionless in a war zone while eight-year-old Grady screamed for his help.

He should have known better. He should have remembered the illusion of such beliefs.

The images were less specific now, coming to him in slivers, creeping into his finest dreams, leaving gaping footprints in the wake. Morphing themselves into a new beast somewhere between myth and reality. Built taller with twisted additions from the present.

Sometimes the dream was exactly the same as it'd always been, but he would wake with the sensation of Grady's foot cracking against his face, and instead of screams—words. Accusations.

_That's for leaving me in Da Lat!_

_You could have come back for me!_

_That's for leaving me…_

"Adam."

Accusations in perpetual echo. Copper tang from the blunt hit to his face riding on the back of his teeth.

"Adam. Hey, you want this?"

Adam blinked, then reached for the mug Malloy held out to him and took a sip, loosening his tongue from the phantom taste of blood.

Coffee.

Right amount of cream. Too much sugar.

"Thanks," he said, keeping a gentle grip as he settled it to the marble surface of the bar.

Malloy folded a towel next to the sink then looked at him. "Are you okay? You look about a million miles away."

He sighed and lifted the mug. "I'm fine. Just didn't sleep well last night." He tried to force a casual tone. "Guess I'm paying for it today."

Malloy played along, giving him a light smile. "Uh huh, just don't come dragging around at Happy Hour like this or you'll cut into our profits."

He loosened his fingers from around the porcelain rim. "We have profits now?"

"Very funny," she said, tossing the towel at him.

He caught it one-handed and rose from his stool, sliding the mug towards the sink. He glanced at the darkened back room as he rounded the bar to start putting up the glasses Malloy was drying. "Isn't it Grady's turn for morning cleanup?" he asked.

She nodded. "Yes, but he said he had something going on at the dojo early, so I told him he could go."

An uncomfortable prickle danced down Adam's spine. "Malloy, we've got kegs being delivered today and I gotta go to work. Grady's supposed to be here to help you with that." He sounded sharp and he knew it, but the old accusations were echoing in his head. He was trapped in a glass box, and couldn't get away from them.

_That's for leaving me in Da Lat! _

_Help me, Beaudreaux! Please. Help me!_

_You could have come back for me!_

Malloy kept drying dishes and laughed. "First of all, I have handled many keg deliveries without his help—or yours, for that matter. I will be fine. Second, I told him he didn't have to, but he called Miguel who agreed to come by at the appointed time to aid with the heavy lifting."

Adam accepted a glass from her and huffed shortly, putting it up on the rack. "And do any of you remember that this is a bar and Miguel is underage?"

"Hey," said Malloy, setting the next glass aside and turning around. "Miguel's helped with this before, at your request I might add." She narrowed her eyes. "What's with you today?"

"What are you talking about? Nothing's with me."

"Really? Because if I didn't know better, it would seem to me like you're searching for a reason to be angry with Grady. Did he do something?"

"What?" he scoffed, taking the glass she'd abandoned and starting to dry it himself.

"Calling it like I see it." She gripped his hand before he could reach for the next mug. "Adam. Talk to me. What's going on?"

He stopped and shook his head. "Nothing," he said, then seeing her look, sighed. "Sorry. Nothing I can pinpoint, anyway. Just a feeling." He leaned his hip against the counter, folded his arms, and took a calming breath. "Has Grady been acting strange to you? The last few days, maybe?"

Malloy looked contemplative. "I don't think so. He seemed a little under the weather yesterday, but looked fine this morning. Why? What do you think is going on?"

"I don't know. I just know I feel like something is. Something he's not telling me. And I've known him too long to ignore something in my gut like this."

"Have you asked him about it?"

Adam threw his hands up in frustration. "That's the problem. He's avoiding me. Every time I go to talk to him lately, he's nowhere. It's stupid, but I feel like I'm back in Da Lat after that damn mission, looking for him all over again. I keep thinking he should be right where I left him. Meanwhile, he's somewhere else entirely, God-knows-what going on with him. I don't think I've even laid eyes on him in the last four days."

Malloy smiled, a compassionate smile. "Adam, come on. You've had a stressful time at work. You just closed that family homicide case and you know how those affect you."

Rocking back, he began to protest.

"Adam," she cut in. "Let me clue you in. When you get stressed, you like knowing exactly where everyone is, and it bothers you when you don't."

He let his mouth hang open, then closed it. He couldn't exactly deny it.

"Look," she continued. "How about we have breakfast tomorrow? We haven't done that for a while. Pancakes at your place? You leave a message with Grady at the dojo. I'll tell Miguel when he gets here. We'll meet up tomorrow and you will find we are all present and accounted for. Grady included."

Adam gripped the air in his lungs a long moment, then released it through his nose. He opened his arms as Malloy leaned in to hug him. "Yeah. Yeah, okay," he sighed. "Pancakes tomorrow." He nodded rotely as she let go, but kept his hands on her shoulders. "Just do me a favor, huh? Just in case I'm not paranoid? Keep an eye on him a little. If he looks off, just… just let me know. Okay?"

"Sure." She turned back to the glasses as he started towards the door. "Pancakes tomorrow," she called.

"Tomorrow," he agreed.

**/**

**\**

The computer locked him out for the fourth time in a row and Adam rolled his chair back in frustration. At this rate he'd never get the closing reports finished and he wanted this case off his mind. "What's with the system today?" he called to Kelsey.

"I don't know," she called back, "but it's happening to everyone."

"Hey, Sarge?" Rothman interrupted, swiveling to face him. "Call on line two. It's Grady."

Adam sighed, feeling the knot at the base of his neck loosen. He reached for the phone.

"Hey, B." Grady's voice was light and easy, replacing the accusatory tone from Adam's dreams. It made all the fears he'd been feeling suddenly seem ridiculously unfounded.

"Hey," he answered back. "You okay? You need something?"

"Nah," said Grady, and there was a hint of laughter in the word. "Malloy just kind of, you know, strongly hinted that I should call you."

Adam grimaced, thinking of what she might have said. And maybe how it might have sounded. He was overprotective, sometimes, he knew, and it wasn't fair to someone no longer eight years old. But sometimes he just couldn't help it. "Yeah," he said. "Sorry about that. Just… hadn't seen you for a few days."

"Yeah," agreed Grady. "Been busy I guess. Lot going on at the dojo with the tournaments coming up." He paused, and Adam could hear the jerk of someone hitting the punching bag in the background.

"Not working too hard, are ya?" he asked. "Malloy said you looked under the weather yesterday."

"Me?" said Grady. "No, I'm fine. If you want to talk to someone about working too hard, look in a mirror, pal."

Adam laughed. "Yeah. Yeah, alright."

"Listen. I've got kids coming in for extra work tonight, but Malloy told me about breakfast tomorrow. And Miguel's in. I'll see you then. Okay?"

"Okay," agreed Adam, rocking closer to the receiver of the phone. "Grady?"

"Yeah?"

"Thanks for calling."

There was a pause. Almost too long. "No problem, B. No problem."

**/**

**\**

"Community ed classes?" Miguel choked on his sausage, dropping his fork back to the table and reaching for his juice. When he stopped sputtering, he looked at Adam with dark eyes. "Man, don't you ever quit?"

Malloy and Grady were laughing.

"Oh, come on," said Adam. "You have the intelligence. That's all I'm saying. You could do it if you wanted to. Community ed would be a nice low key way to get into some classes—you know, just to see if there's something out there you would enjoy studying more in the future."

Grady reached for the syrup, drawing a line over his last bite. "Yeah, Miguel. Weren't you saying the other day you thought it'd be cool to—what was it—work with animals?"

"No no," Malloy cut in. "He said it'd be interesting to work in community relations."

"Dealing with bureaucrats? Same thing," said Grady.

"You're not helping," said Miguel, glaring at them both before turning back to Adam. "Beaudreaux. Don't take this the wrong way, but I don't think I'm ready for community college." He spread a palm on his chest. "Tell the truth, I don't think community college is ready for me."

"I'm not saying you have to go next week, Miguel. I'm just saying… think about it. It could be a real possibility for you."

Grady laughed again and rose, taking his plate over to the sink. Miguel gestured towards him as he walked away. "And why am I so lucky to get this lecture? Why aren't you bugging him about this?"

"Oh, he has," said Grady, turning back from the sink with an annoyed expression. "Do not open that can of worms, my friend." He wagged a finger in Miguel's direction. "You. You at least have a high school diploma to work with."

Miguel stood after him, picking up his plate with a parting shot at Adam. "Yes. I do. Everyone should be so lucky to be incarcerated and forced to finish high school."

"You didn't exactly have to," Adam corrected.

"No—only if I wanted a chance in hell with the parole board." Miguel shook his head and muttered, "And they say prison has no benefits."

Grady snorted. A softly bitter sound. "Not the prison I was in."

Adam swallowed. Grady never mentioned prison in Nam. Not since that first day in Adam's apartment. This time, he could tell Grady had meant the comment light but it came out dark, played too serious, and for a moment there was nothing but the sound of running water as Grady rinsed his and Miguel's dishes.

Malloy met Adam's eyes. He stood carefully, taking her plate up with his own, moving cautiously into the kitchen and rethinking whether he should be worried about Grady these days or not. "Hey," he started to say, but Grady turned around, glanced at the looks on their faces and forced a smile. Adam hated the forced smile.

"Ah, man, I'm sorry guys," said Grady. "I didn't mean it to come out like that." He looked to his left. "Word to the wise, Miguel, talking about prison is pretty much a party killer." He tossed a wet towel in Miguel's direction and watched him catch it deftly.

"You know it, homes," Miguel agreed seriously, tapping a light knuckle into Grady's arm.

The tension of the moment broke slowly after that, but it did break. Grady stayed behind the others, working through a round of chess with Adam before taking off for the dojo. It all felt normal and routine, but Adam kept thinking maybe Grady was under the weather as Malloy had said. His eyes looked sunken in—the line down to his hip from his shoulder more rigid and narrow than usual—but he passed it off as nothing when Adam asked about it.

"You worry too much." Grady chuckled as he put on his jacket. "Malloy's got you seeing things. B, I'm fine."

"Sure?" Adam pressed.

Grady rolled his eyes, then stepped forward to pat Adam's shoulder. "I'll see you later," he said deliberately, and walked out the door. Adam watched him go, all the way until he disappeared around the corner, then shook himself, knocking his knuckles against the doorjamb as he moved back inside.

He didn't see Grady again that day. But that night, he was back in the glass box, hearing Grady scream. In the middle of the police station. In the middle of the bar. Back in a war-torn jungle. Powerless. Things going on he couldn't reach.

He woke while it was still dark, accusations echoing in his head, feeling his jaw ache.

**/**

**\**

tbc


	2. Chapter 2

Again with the warning - potentially disturbing content. And by that, I'll just confess that it disturbed me some to write it and I don't want anyone venturing in unawares.

**/**

**Chapter Two**

**\**

Grady had actually gone straight to the police station when he'd first thought he'd seen him.

He'd wandered through the front doors in a daze and made his way all the way to Beaudreaux's desk without conscious thought, but Beaudreaux wasn't there. He'd found Rothman instead, sitting in the middle of a buzzing bullpen, phones ringing, words flitting sharp and fast around him. Something about a family of four, shot execution style, somewhere on the north side.

He'd felt absurdly small in the midst of it. Like a lost kid looking for his dad in a grocery store.

Pathetic.

"Grady," Rothman had said, holding his hand over the mouthpiece of his phone as he spoke. "You need Adam?"

Grady'd shoved his hands into his pockets self-consciously. "Uh, he here?"

"'Fraid not. It's kind of hit the fan around here. Rough crime scene this morning. Mob stuff maybe. He's meeting with Pine and the commissioner downtown."

Grady'd nodded his head, numbly, like any of that information had penetrated or made sense.

"Hey," Rothman had continued, oddly focused on Grady's face, focused in a way that seemed bizarre in the midst of the chaos. "You need me to call him?" And he'd seemed actually willing to. Not annoyed like he sometimes was when Grady came calling at the station, getting into Beaudreaux's business at the worst of times.

"Nah," Grady had answered, trying to school whatever'd been showing on his face. Because, really, what the hell was he supposed to have said if they'd actually produced Beaudreaux and set him in front of him in the middle of that mess?

_Hey, B, I think I just saw someone I used to know when I was a kid_.

_And?_

_And for some reason it scared the hell out of me. More than Nigel. More than Hardin. And I don't know why. Explain it to me? _

Twenty-seven years old, martial arts master, and he'd been standing there like he was thirteen and clueless. No clear or distinct memory of any one event to tell him why he was feeling the way he was—just a mess of time in a Vietnamese prison camp, and an undefined dread.

Beaudreaux would have looked at him like he was crazy.

"Hey," Rothman had called, catching him as he'd turned back towards the exit. "You want me to tell him you stopped by?"

"Nah. No." Grady waved it off. "Was just in the neighborhood. Was just going to say hi."

Rothman seemed to accept that. He'd gone back to his phone call, and Grady had left, feeling nearly as out of it as when he'd arrived. All the while telling himself it was just kid stuff, kid fears. Nothing. Unimportant. Probably hadn't even really been him. Probably had just been seeing things.

Then, of course, Trang had shown up with the nine millimeter and shattered that illusion—standing just inside the empty dojo, aiming the gun at Grady's ribs. Grady had recognized him too. Petrov's lacky, just like in the camp. If one was real, so was the other.

After that, it'd been too late to say anything to anyone, let alone Beaudreaux.

After that, it'd been painfully easy—conning B into thinking everything was fine.

It shouldn't have been that easy, but it was a blessing that it was. He'd conned people from time to time through the years, he'd just never been confident in his acting ability over the long haul. Especially not with someone like B.

**/**

**\**

Trang was waiting for Grady when he left breakfast at Beaudreaux's. Standing by the café tables on the street corner, reading a newspaper. Grady pretended he didn't see him, easing a leg over the seat of his motorcycle with a deliberate focus on his helmet.

"Is he still in the dark?" asked Trang, shaking the newspaper straight after turning the page.

"Yes," said Grady, not looking up.

"We'll find out if you're lying," Trang said next, calm and conversational, like discussing the summer weather. "You know we will."

"You don't have to remind me," said Grady, feeling his skin crawl, even though Trang wasn't really the one who scared him. Trang had been there, a guard in the prison camp, tacking yard after yard onto Grady's sentence. A shadowy giant in Grady's memory, but not the full monster. He was a martial arts master. Grady's equal. Maybe even better. But he wasn't the one that made Grady's lungs feel like they were trapped in molasses.

That was Petrov.

Even the name made him cringe but he didn't know why. Trang seemed to though, and he got off on saying it as much as possible. "_Petrov _wants you reminded."

Grady swallowed and nodded, but didn't open his mouth.

Trang folded the newspaper. "You'll be at the dock. Tonight. 6pm. You know what will happen if you're not."

Grady nodded again and pulled the helmet onto his head. He risked a glance at Trang before flipping down the visor and saw Trang smile at him. All sharp teeth and attitude. To Trang, this was a game. It always had been. Playing with people's lives, raising the stakes then waiting for the outcome, waiting for everything to crumble.

It was a game to Petrov too, perhaps. But where Trang was predictively responsive to the orchestration of events, Petrov was a void. While Trang was scary for the way he kept changing the rules. Petrov was scary for the way he followed them. Cold and dispassionate. No mercy. No justice. Simply. Always. Following. Through.

Every threat from his lips like a universal law.

Grady was at the dock right on time.

**/**

**\**

The job given him that night was just like the others. Get the list, or the file—whatever the hell it was—and get out. It'd been simple so far, and if it went like the other four had gone, it'd be tantamount to a smash and grab. The dock-house was two stories. Shipping manifests and logs were kept in the office on the second floor. No safe, just a locked cabinet.

That's where things started going wrong.

Three men, dressed in black like Grady was, gloved and masked, were already there. Normally, it might have been an easy fight. Grady could have taken them in under a minute, all without breaking a sweat. He would have too, if it hadn't been for the taser. That and the fact that they seemed to be waiting for him. Whatever Petrov was collecting, it hadn't occurred to him that others might be seeking to collect the same things.

He fell backwards over the railing when the electricity hit, cutting the taser's connection with his clothing as he dropped out of range. He hit the water hard, air vanishing from his lungs in an instant. His muscles seized. The flood of water into his nose and mouth weighed into him like mud. By the time he pulled himself together, twitching hands gripping desperately around the rope net up to the dock, it was too late. The list was gone, along with the masked men.

And Trang—Trang was waiting for him, crouched on the dock, shaking his head, looking down with mock chagrin. "And you were doing so well," he tisked, not sounding nearly as disappointed as Grady thought he should.

**/**

**\**

The blindfold was a familiar sensation at this point. They put it on him every time they took him to see Petrov. This time, Trang had cinched it over his ears as well, tight and uncomfortable, but when they got inside and put him on his knees, Grady could still hear the raspy sounds of breathing coming from the cages. The whole set-up had pushed his other senses into overdrive. The smell of mildew seeped thickly into his sinuses. The grimy feel of damp air sat sharply on his skin.

And Petrov's voice. Calm and motionless. Calling from the past.

Petrov's English sounded Russian, but his Vietnamese was perfect. Like Grady's. No accent at all. He spoke with Grady in Vietnamese more than anything.

"No list today?" he said, pulling the felt binding from Grady's eyes. He shifted to eye level, studying Grady passionlessly. After a moment, he tapped a finger to Grady's forehead and stood. "How unfortunate." He signaled to one of the men standing sentry near the cages. Without hesitation the man leaned to the left, unlocked the lowest door and dragged out a woman by the nape of her neck. Her clothes were ragged and torn. Her feet were bare, and she stumbled in her exit from having been folded up for so long.

"Yes. That one," said Petrov. He looked at Grady and drew his gun, face expressionless as the woman was brought to kneel opposite. Dark hair. Eyes like autumn, wide with fear.

She stared at Grady, at Petrov's gun, then back again. "No. No please. No please," she said, breathing quick and harsh. Vietnamese. All in Vietnamese. "_No, please. No please. No please_."

When Petrov walked behind her, holding the gun to base of her neck, Grady joined her. "No. Don't. _Please_." But that was all he got out before it was too late—the sound of the echoing gun cracking into his body like a kick to his sternum. Shock, hot and electric, flooded across his skin, hollowing his vision.

_No. _

He jerked forward, hands hovering over her body—still warm. Blood oozed into his jeans as he curled her head onto his knee. He stared, opening his mouth but unable to speak, lungs locked and refusing to draw air. Finally, he looked up, finding Petrov's dispassionate face staring back at him. "Why?" he whispered, feeling dark and sick. He swallowed with difficulty, then breathed in on a sob. "Why didn't you just kill _me_?"

Petrov squatted to Grady's level. Lithe and fluid. He tipped his head to the side, stretching a hand to Grady's face in a gesture that could almost look like affection. But weary. Like a teacher past limits with grade-schoolers.

He made a short tisking sound, clicking his tongue without emotion. "These are the rules," he said. "You already know this." He pointed to the cages. "If you fail in a task for me, one of them dies. If the police open an investigation for me, they die. If your Adam Beaudreaux learns of our association, they die. Do I really need to explain this yet again? Or would you prefer another more practical demonstration?"

Grady worked his mouth open. "_I'm_ the one causing you problems. Me." He tightened his hands around the woman's cooling skin. "Kill _me_."

Petrov shook his head, a casual gesture. "You, Grady? And how would it look? Your friend is a cop. Your death brings questions. Her death… brings nothing." He slid his touch down Grady's cheek, resting a finger just below his chin. "Your death would matter to the wrong people. Her death matters only to you."

Grady jerked his head back. Petrov let him.

"That day that you recognized me. Do you want know how I recognized you?"

Grady said nothing.

"Your eyes," continued Petrov, unbothered. "So expressive." He lingered for a moment then looked down at the woman's face. "So many of my colleagues underestimate the value of strangers. They think to create cooperation they must go to all the effort to threaten friends, family, loved ones. So messy. So much unnecessary effort. We could do it that way, of course, but this… no obvious trail to follow. No questions. And so many to choose from." He dropped his hand, lacing fingers in the woman's limp hair, dragging her back from Grady's grip. "Do we understand each other now?"

Stiffly, mutely, Grady nodded.

Petrov tapped his forehead one more time, sharply. "Keep your friends close," he said as he rose. "And your enemies… distracted." He turned away and called to the others, saying something in Russian. Two men came forward to grab the body, dragging her away while Petrov swiveled toward Trang. "Make certain he remembers this lesson. I don't want to repeat myself again."

Trang smiled, coming forward as Petrov started to walk away. "Trang?" Petrov called. "Not the face. We mustn't make it too difficult for him to explain."

Trang loomed, saying nothing, a sadistic lilt in his eyes.

Grady tensed.

"And, Grady?" Petrov continued. "No fighting, yah? You would not want another body on the floor."

**/**

**\**

tbc


	3. Chapter 3

**/**

**Chapter Three**

**\**

Malloy drove in late the next morning, hoping one of the guys would be around. She had with her the new menus for the special wine collection, stacked in a plastic carrying case to protect them from the rain. And in her back seat, three complementary cases of beer from the new local brewery—three cases she didn't want to carry in on her own.

She figured she was in luck. For what seemed like the first time all week, Grady's motorcycle was out back when she pulled up. He'd left it uncovered. His helmet sitting derelict on the seat, water collecting under the visor. She shook her head. Then, rolling her eyes at herself, picked it up and carried it in with the menus through the door to her office, setting both on top of the shelves Miguel had made.

"Grady?" she called while taking off her jacket and tying on her apron.

There was no answer and she figured maybe Grady was gone after all, having taken a taxi or the bus like he sometimes did if he had too much for his bike to carry.

She plucked up the menus and walked into the bar, leaving them on the counter. The stools were already down, but that might have been Adam, coming by early the way he'd been doing most of the week.

Then she heard the music. Volume low, but resonant. Grady's Zen music, as she liked to call it.

She walked the length of the bar to see his bedroom door was open, and there he was, standing by the dresser, rolling clothes into a laundry bag with slow, careful motions. He was angled away from her. The slope of his jaw a pale line. His stance like a shadow. Unobtrusive and distant.

"Grady?" she said, tapping softly on the doorjamb, and was surprised when he flinched, knocking the picture frame by his mirror onto the floor.

He flattened a hand to the dresser's surface, breathing in sharply as he turned his head to look at her. "Malloy. Hey," he said, after a silence that sat too long, voice incongruently flat. He looked away, palming the opening of his laundry bag closed as he did so, sliding it stiffly onto the dresser's shelf.

Malloy breathed with minimal motion, watching his profile.

She knew that look. She'd known it since she was fifteen. It was the look Adam got every time he'd come up empty looking for Grady and then tried to pretend it didn't matter. It was the look Adam had worn for weeks when she was sixteen and her father had finally sat her down and made a delicate attempt to explain war, and loss, and concepts like PTSD.

For as many times as she'd imagined what Grady was like before she'd met him, she'd never thought that look would be so recognizable from the other side.

"I'm sorry," she said. "I didn't mean to startle you."

"You didn't," Grady denied quickly. But turning back around, he looked down, gaze falling on the broken picture frame, expression tight and face pale. He glanced up again and smiled commendably. "Or, I guess you did—obviously." He gestured at the photo and forced a laugh. "I just didn't hear you come in. Zoning out I guess." His tone had shifted. Too much inflection. The modulation he used when he was trying to be funny, but the motions from his body were all wrong. Dropping his eyes suddenly, smile vanishing, he squatted carefully onto his heels and started picking up the glass.

She thought she should help, but couldn't get herself to move.

Finally, air entered her lungs and she went forward, taking the small wastebasket by the door and bringing it over. He glanced at her gratefully, and dumped the fragments inside. He rescued the photo from the remainder of the frame, then dropped in the rest.

"Are you okay?" she asked as they both stood.

"Me?" He looked at her, eyes raw but warming to an easier smile as he propped the photo to a lean near the mirror. Beaudreaux in army gear. Grady, age eight, standing next to him in a dirty t-shirt.

What it would have been like to know them then.

She peeled her eyes away. "Yeah, you." She pushed her inflection to mimic his, like she sometimes did with Adam, trying to get things out of him without making him feel cornered. "Don't take this the wrong way, but you don't look so good."

He laughed. "What are you talking about? I'm fine."

"Grady," she started, more serious this time. She reached out, trying to feel his forehead, but he pulled away.

"Malloy, I'm fine. I promise. I just didn't sleep well last night. You know?"

She let her hands fall. "Yeah. Yeah, a lot of that seems to be going around."

"What are you talking about?"

"Adam," she said. "He's been worried about you."

Grady hooked a hand behind his neck, half turning away from her. "Yeah," he said, sounding annoyed. "So you said the other day."

"Come on," she pressed. "What's going on?"

He met her eyes and sighed. "Okay, look—maybe, just maybe, I'm feeling a little under the weather like you said, but it's no big deal."

She gave him a look, Adam's concern ringing in her ear.

"Malloy, please… please, do not say anything to Beaudreaux about this. He has been stressed out of his mind all week. He will be all over me for nothing, and I do not have time for that right now."

"So he's a little protective. After all your time apart—after Nigel—can you blame him? He just wants to be there for you."

"I—I know." Grady held his hands up, placating, like she was the one being defensive. "And he is. Always. But when it matters, okay?" He returned her look. "Come on. I am an adult. I think I can take care of myself well enough to know when to go to Beaudreaux and when to not. This is not an emergency situation and in a few days I'll be over it without any of us having to go through the mother-hen and father-rooster routine. Now—did you need something, or were you just startling me for the fun of it?"

"Oh, so you admit I startled you," she said, letting him switch tracks.

"Maybe," he answered playfully. "But I'll deny it if you tell anyone."

Her eyes flickered up with his. She caught the apology in them but also heard the double meaning in his words and closed her mouth.

"Oye, Pancho!" Miguel's voice rang out. "Anyone here?"

Grady gripped Malloy's shoulder, solid but brief, then walked past. "Hey, Cisco," he called back. "We're here."

**/**

**\**

"What about your mother's car?"

Miguel shot Grady a look over the top of Malloy's vehicle, one hand resting on the cases of beer still stuck in the back, but Malloy couldn't tell what he was thinking. "It's my mother's car," he answered, mist from the damp air catching in his eyebrows. "Occasionally that means she needs to drive it." He pulled on the crate, then gave up. "Are you pushing?"

Grady bowed lower on his side, but his effort seemed half-hearted and cautious, hand palming the shoulder of the front seat in a way that made it seem more like a grip for balance than an effort to snap it forward. And one arm, in a repetitive gesture, kept crossing his chest, absently, like he didn't know he was doing it.

Maybe someone got in a lucky shot at the dojo, Malloy considered. Maybe his undefined illness was a chest cold. Maybe she should make a big deal out of it and send him back inside.

Or maybe Adam had a right to his paranoia, and this was something else entirely.

Two days ago, she'd been ready to suggest that Adam go talk to Willis or his veteran's group—get perspective on this misplaced stress for Grady. Now she was thinking it should have been the other way around. Like all of them, Grady had demons to spare. His were just a little more violent than the rest.

She folded her arms and bit her tongue.

Miguel ducked back into the car, trying to leverage the case forward. "Besides," he continued at Grady, "you're going to the dojo anyway. Willis's is on the way." He stood straight in frustration, letting go of the box and spreading his forearms on the roof. "And since when has it ever bothered you to give me a ride? If you don't want to, just say so."

Grady straightened as well. "It doesn't," he said sharply, then pulled up his tone when Miguel frowned. "Look, I'm sorry, alright. I just… I might have to take some gear down with me and with the rain, I wasn't going to take the bike." He tilted his chin, peering at the cases, then turned to Malloy. "How did you even get these in here?"

Malloy rolled her eyes, but didn't answer. Instead, she took out her keys, tossing them into Grady's grip. Her car was banged up enough these days, she figured whatever it encountered in Little Saigon couldn't make it much worse.

Grady gave her a sidelong glance, holding the keys hesitantly.

"Take my car," she spelled out. "Give Miguel a ride. Don't park it on the street. Be back by four."

"What about the beer?"

"If you can't get it out, I doubt anyone else can. Go, before I change my mind."

"Okay, alright," said Grady. He lifted his eyebrows at Miguel. "I'll go grab my stuff." He shoved the keys into his jacket and went inside through the office.

In his absence, the patter of light rain tapped a slow beat on the metal cans below the drip-off of the roof, steady and rhythmic.

"He okay?" asked Miguel.

Malloy looked at the open office doorway, folding her arms so her hands hooked below opposite elbows. "I don't know," she lied.

**/**

**\**

"Lieutenant Pine."

"Charlie, it's Malloy. Is Adam around?" She pressed the phone close to her head, holding the tip of her finger over the ear opposite. The bar wasn't crowded yet, but the four men lounging at the nearby table were laughing loudly enough to make it seem so. And behind Charlie's voice she could hear the clamor of the police bullpen vying for his attention.

"He's out running interviews with Kelsey," he answered. "You need me to get him a message?"

She loosened her fingers and tucked a stray hair behind her ear, not certain if she felt more like she was betraying Adam or betraying Grady. She looked at the clock. Fifteen minutes past four. Not that late. Not so much that she should really be worried about it. "No. That's alright," she said. "Just tell him to call me when he gets back, will you?"

"Of course."

She hung the phone up carefully, then took a breath and picked up the bottle of wine for the customer in the back booth—an Asian man who'd come in a few minutes ago and politely said hello to her in Vietnamese. She knew the type. The lone drinker who wanted an evening to just nurse a glass and consider life. She didn't mind, as long as he wasn't the type to drown himself quickly then cause a scene.

His eyes were shrewd and calm as she set the bottle and glass in front of him. She didn't think she had to worry. "Can I get you anything else?" she asked, uncorking the bottle.

"No, thank you," he answered simply, pouring the glass himself.

**/**

**\**

tbc


	4. Chapter 4

**/**

**Chapter Four**

**\**

Adam had long since begun to believe his city was the Grand Central Station of the underworld. If a criminal existed, at some point in their lives, they'd come here. Being a major port town, it made sense, but in the last few days the trend seemed truer than before. New faces. Old faces. They were all showing up. And if he couldn't get himself to stay focused he'd stay a step behind all of them.

Gripping the files in his hand, he looked up and down the street outside Malloy's, then held the door for Rothman.

In the entryway, he stopped.

Grady was behind the counter, standing by the register, completely motionless. His jacket was half off and he was staring into the distance, towards the back booths, expression frozen, like he'd forgotten what he was doing right in the middle of it. As Adam watched, Malloy went up and softly touched his shoulder. Grady shook himself and faced her, digging into his pocket to hand her a set of keys.

"Sarge?" said Rothman, bumping Adam's elbow.

"Sorry." Adam moved, trotting down the steps. "Hey," he said as he got closer. "Everything alright?"

Grady looked over and smiled. "Hey, B." His expression seemed easygoing, but his gaze darted back to Malloy before making actual eye contact. "Yeah, yeah, everything's great. I was just running a little late." He finished taking off his jacket and gave Rothman a nod. "Get you guys anything?"

Adam shook his head, pulling out a stool and setting the files on the bar's surface. "Not this time. We're on duty."

Rothman grabbed a stool of his own and sat next to him.

"In the bar?" said Malloy.

"We don't have a choice," lamented Rothman, planting his fists on top of each other, then propping his chin on them, deliberately forlorn. "The station is a little sieve-like at the moment."

"What do you mean, sieve-like?" asked Malloy, leaning forward to read the tab on one of the files. "Is that the Foley murder? I thought you closed it?"

"We did," said Rothman, slouching up onto his elbows. "Dave Mancini was the shooter, no question. We're just not sure anymore if he was sent to kill Foley, or if it was personal revenge. He and Foley had some, well, let's just say they had some questionable business dealings. Mancini did a job for Foley then executed Foley and his entire family when he didn't get paid. At least that's how it looks on paper. Foley screwed him over but probably thought he was safe from retribution because Foley was the harbor master."

Malloy shook her head. "And why does that matter?"

"_Thee_ Harbor Master," reiterated Rothman. "Of one of the biggest ports on the west coast."

Adam cleared his throat. "We can't prove it, but we think he was funneling illegal shipments through customs. And not just for one criminal network. All of them. There are a lot of minor operations around, but any major smuggling—if you wanted it brought in without questions, Foley had a hand in it. The entire pipeline was in his control. Now, in the void left behind, there's a push to take over the network. Whoever reconstructs the pipeline controls all the major illegal shipping in the city. Instant king of the mountain."

Grady had his fists on the counter. He looked behind him, at the customers in the bar, at the booths, then down at his hands, a torn look in his eyes that made Adam frown.

"But not to worry, we have no shortage of contenders lining up for the job," continued Rothman. "Irish. Russian. Italian. Chinese. You name it. It's like an international mob convention. Suddenly everyone's in town. If Madagascar were big on organized crime, they'd have someone here."

"Wouldn't control of that kind of information just go to the new harbor master?" asked Malloy.

Rothman shook his head. "Harbor Master is an appointed position. There's no way anyone could know who the next guy would be—whether he'd be dirty or clean. Pay-offs, dirty customs agents, switch points, coded logs. Foley had it locked down. No one knew how all the pieces fit except him. But with the right information, with Foley's information, the network gets reconstructed, and it may not matter who the new guy is."

"Okay, so what does this have to do with the station being 'sieve-like?'"

Adam took his eyes off Grady, focusing on Malloy as he answered. "Someone's been hacking into the computer system at the station—accessing case files, personnel files, everything. And to get as far as they keep getting, they have to have inside help."

"A leak in the department?"

"Probably several," said Rothman, dropping his chin to his fists again. "Thus the sieve."

Adam nodded. "We figure until we know where to go with all this," he gestured at the files, "we need to keep the status of our investigation from falling into the wrong hands. At the moment that means staying away from headquarters. At least here, I don't feel like someone's watching our every move."

Grady looked pale. He opened and closed his mouth like he was about to ask a question, then coughed lightly and licked his lips. "Coffee instead, guys?" he asked.

"Sure, thanks," Adam answered.

Grady turned and started messing with the coffee pot. Adam cast a questioning look at Malloy. She started to speak, then pursed her lips instead, shaking her head minutely.

Adam's frown deepened. The sensation of fear and frustration leftover from his fragmented nightmare inched back up his spine.

"Hey, Grady," Rothman said suddenly. "Your nose is bleeding."

"What?" Grady glanced up, expression confused.

Rothman stood. "Your nose."

Adam stood also, seeing the dark smudge of blood above Grady's lip.

Grady touched two fingers to his face. "Oh." He stepped back, replacing the fingers with the towel he'd been holding.

"Let me see," said Malloy, reaching for his elbow.

Grady waved her off, dabbing with the towel as he did so. "No. No, look." He pulled the towel away. "Barely bleeding. It's nothing."

"What happened?" asked Adam.

"Kids," said Grady with chagrin. "Overzealous student caught me with a kick to the back of the head." He dabbed at his nose, looking for more blood. "Must have got me worse than I thought."

"You got hit in the back of your head and it made your nose bleed? Grady, that sounds serious." Malloy stepped closer, like she was trying to check if she could still see red.

"No, no." Grady shifted away again, angling his body to toss the towel into the basket set aside for them. "Kid was sparring with another student and got in a lucky shot from behind, knocked me into the punching bag. Caught my nose at just the right angle, you know? Everyone at the dojo gets a little intense around tournament time."

Adam drew a preparatory breath.

"Hey, relax," forestalled Grady, that fake smile again. "No big deal." He glanced down, rubbing at a stray drop that'd smeared below his collar. "But, uh, I should go change my shirt so I don't scare the customers. Be right back. Malloy, the coffee?"

"Yeah, I got it," she said, after a slight delay. Grady was already halfway around the counter.

Adam watched him go, then pressed his palms to the bar and leaned forward. "Something going on I should know about?" he asked.

**/**

**\**

The solid wood frame of the backroom door muted Adam's knock when he tapped on it, but the opaque glass reverberated with the motion, loud and familiar. After a second or two with no response, he gripped the knob and pushed inward.

Grady was standing by the bed, pulling a new Henley over his t-shirt. He glanced at Adam, then beyond into the bar, and finished adjusting the shirt's hem. His face was neutral. His eyes weren't. Adam couldn't decipher what was behind them but it made his lungs constrict.

"Is it getting busy out there already?" Grady asked, playing it off. He sat down on the bed, pulling the laces on his shoe. The shirt with the bloodstain was bunched next to his hip. "Tell Malloy I'll be out in a sec. My shoes are still soaked from the rain. Figure I'll change them while I have the chance."

"It's fine," said Adam, still holding the doorknob. "But, uh, listen—I was thinking. Maybe you should take the evening off. Get some rest."

Grady rolled his eyes. "Not this again. I told you, I'm fine." He swiped at his nose, then bent one knee up to pull on a clean sock.

Adam took another step inside. "You know, it's not a crime to admit you're not feeling 100 percent."

"It is if there's nothing wrong with me. Look, B, I know you've been pretty stressed out lately, but you've got to relax. If you gave me the third degree every time I took a hit in class, we'd be having this discussion every week and Malloy would have to hire a new bartender."

Frustration clawed its way under the back edge of Adam's ribs, but he schooled his response, lifting his eyebrows a bland millimeter instead. "Are we really going to do this again?"

Grady cocked his head. "Didn't I just say that?"

"Hey, I'm worried about you, and this is not just me projecting." Seeing Grady stiffen his shoulders, Adam eased his tone. "Come on, man. I know something's going on with you."

Grady sighed heavily, pulling on another sock. "Nothing is going on with me."

"You're tired. You're on edge." Adam folded his arms. "You know, I was hoping by now you'd realize you could come to me. I was hoping we wouldn't have to do this anymore."

"Yeah, me too," Grady muttered, voice irritated.

"Grady, when are you going to figure out you can trust me?"

"This is not about trust," Grady said shortly. He finished lacing his dry shoes and stood, angling away as he picked up the bloody shirt. He took a deep shuddery breath as he did, and it was so familiar, sending Adam back to those first months after Grady's parents had been killed. Back to the way Grady would wake in the middle of the night, lungs hitching in on a tremble. So skinny and quiet otherwise in the beginning, it'd been the surest sign of his distress. Adam stepped forward, ready to set a hand on Grady's shoulder, but Grady turned back to face him before he could. "Before you go any further here, can I ask you just one question?"

Adam dropped the hand to his side. "What question is that?"

"How old was the little boy in the family that got killed last week?"

He started to shake his head. "Eight. Look. I know where you're going with this, but you're wrong."

"Eight," repeated Grady. Then he reversed motions, setting his hand on Adam's shoulder instead. "B, I know you. You take any tragedy with kids like a personal failure. But there's nothing anyone could have done to save the boy in that family, and I'm not a traumatized eight-year-old in need of rescuing anymore. Let it go." The grip tightened, then slid away as Grady turned, tossing the bloody shirt towards his dresser.

Perfect aim.

Grady smiled, tapping his fist to Adam's elbow. "I'm okay, B," he said softly, then brushed fast past his shoulder, going back into the bar.

Adam gripped the doorknob tightly, letting his eyes flicker around the room. They landed on the picture of the two of them on Grady's dresser—the one he could have sworn just that morning used to be housed in a kapok wood frame.

He clenched his teeth, fighting the line of tension in his spine. "I know you too," he murmured.

**/**

**\**

Rothman closed the file in front of him and reached for his coffee, rubbing at the space between his eyebrows like he was catching Adam's frustration. "I hate to say it, Sarge, but if half the mafia world can't reconstruct this pipeline, I seriously doubt we're going to get a line on it. Not to go overboard with the puns, but Foley's financials are watertight. Rafferty or Castano would be the most obvious connections, maybe Scolari, possibly Chen Dao, but there's nothing."

"Yeah," muttered Adam, taking a sip from his own mug, then adding more cream. His eyes strayed to Grady, watching as he set three beers in front of the ladies at table four, then delivered a clean wineglass to the man in the back. His movements were stiff and overly casual and his eyes kept ticking around the bar in a show of hyper-vigilance Adam hadn't seen from anyone for a long time.

But his nose hadn't started bleeding again.

And at least he was here, where he could be seen—if something were wrong.

_If._

Adam clenched his teeth, then looked down and flipped open another file. "There's got to be something here to give us a starting point."

Rothman sighed, dragging a stack of papers forward. "Let's go through it again."

The phone by the register started to ring.

"I've got it," said Adam, rising from his stool.

"No, sit, I've got it," Malloy countered, hand already on the cradle. "Malloy's."

Adam sat.

"Hey, Julie. Yeah, yeah, he's here." She started to lower the receiver, eyes swinging towards Grady, then pressed it back to her ear. "Yeah, of course, I can tell him. You don't need him back at the dojo again already, do you? With all the work you've been… Oh. Oh. Yeah. Sure, okay." Her expression changed.

There was a pause.

Grady came back up to the bar, setting his tray on the lip of the counter as he started removing empty mugs and loading back the new beers Malloy had set out. Malloy stared at him and he stopped mid-motion, lifting his eyebrows in question. "Yeah," she said again. "Yes, that's great. Thanks. I'll tell him. Yeah. Me too. I'm sure he'll be glad to hear it."

Slowly, she hung up the phone.

"Julie from the dojo?" asked Adam, glancing between the two of them.

Malloy nodded.

Grady swallowed, peering down at the mugs on his tray. When he finally looked up he locked eyes with Malloy, resigned but stoic. And pale. Oddly pale. Grayish pale.

Malloy stared back at him and recited Julie's message with a calm that felt incongruent with the sudden tension in the air. "She told me to tell you it's no problem if you extend your week off—with all the students being done with competition, it's been a slow month anyway."

Grady glanced at Adam, then closed his eyes, breathing out through his nose. There was a small tremble in his stance. Pale shadows stretching down his throat. Body frozen, like a bump might shatter him.

"Grady?" Adam said, rising from his stool, suddenly more concerned than upset.

Grady's eyes came open instantly. "I have to leave," he said, voice toned so low it took Adam a moment to register that he was already moving.

Slivered clips from the recent reincarnations of his nightmare flooded Adam's senses. "No," he ordered, rounding to intercept him, registering in a flash-pan way the reality of no-extra-morning-workouts and a bloody nose that couldn't have come from sparring. He caught Grady just as he reached the corner of the bar, two hands to his shoulders. "Not this time. Whatever this is… if you're in trouble, let me help."

"Let me go," Grady growled, but it felt more like fear than anger.

"I can't do that. I can't let you leave like this."

"It's not up to you to let me or not let me do anything," said Grady. "And if I wanted your help, I would ask for it." He brought his hands up defensively, dislodging Adam's grip with a shove, then he spun, heading towards the back exit instead. Adam reached, catching his elbow, fully expecting a kick to his face. _That's for leaving me in Da Lat!_ It didn't come.

Grady jerked, breaking Adam's hold before catching his wrist and twisting quickly to shove back with his other hand, but the action died mid-motion. Grady's face went completely white. He stumbled sideways, nearly going down, staying upright with a clumsy palm to the bar.

"Grady?" Adam took a step, attempting again to close the gap.

"Stay away from me." Grady held out a hand, as though trying to ward Adam off. Tucking his other arm close to his chest, he leaned back from the bar, trying to straighten. Then his eyes rolled up and he crumpled, hitting the floor hard as a smattering of patrons stood in surprise and started murmuring.

Adam surged forward but it wasn't fast enough to catch him. He dropped to his knees, bracing one hand behind Grady's neck, the other tapping his face repeatedly. "Grady. Grady."

Nothing. Not even a flicker.

"Call an ambulance," he ordered, looking behind him and shouting through the crowd, honing in on Rothman and Malloy's stunned faces. "Rothman," he said specifically. "Get to the unit and get a bus here now."

**/**

**\**

tbc


	5. Chapter 5

**/**

**Chapter Five**

**\**

The orphanage in Da Nang had a long row of chicken cages between the back of the building and what the other children called _The Big Wall_. Given its name, it wasn't as big as Grady thought it should be, but tall enough. Winding through the area, a mass of wood and sandbags, mortared with mud and crude cement. Chunks of glass and brick stuck out of it in places, and half of it was stained black, like someone had tried to burn it down. It reached all the way around the compound and ran straight into the edge of their building, making everything feel like a prison. A barricade between them and the city on one side—a blockade to the footpath toward the Han River on the other.

It'd been built by the soldiers. Not so much as a defense but a shield. An obstacle. The other children said the soldiers were going to knock it down when they left, but they never did. And though Grady hated the way the wall made him feel, the narrow space between it and the last cage became the perfect hiding space when Danh Huu was on a tear. Scaring everyone to silence. Angry. Brutal. Insisting the children needed discipline. More discipline.

When he found him, Danh Huu would stand on the other side of the chickens and rattle the cage. Shoving until the chickens were squawking and the hard surface behind Grady's back made him feel bruised from his head to his tailbone. But he wouldn't come out until he knew he wouldn't get hit. He would lace his fingers in the wire, close his eyes, and tell himself Beaudreaux was coming. He would tell himself that the other children were wrong when they said all the soldiers were gone.

There were explosions sometimes. Gunfire. Napalm. The war was still being fought. And if the war was being fought, the soldiers had to still be there.

"Grady."

The chickens were squawking now. Chattering back at Danh Huu. And Beaudreaux was there. Beaudreaux's voice. Cutting through the trap.

He'd finally come.

"Grady."

Grady opened his eyes, experiencing a moment of vertigo when he realized he wasn't standing behind the cage, but was somehow under it, flat on his back and staring upward. The sloped bottom was higher than it should have been. Farther away. Looking like planked cedar. Smelling like beer. "B?"

"That's it. Take it easy."

Beaudreaux's face swayed further into focus. Older than Grady remembered. Aged. And he had a mustache—that was new.

Reality flooded back in a wave, welling up to Grady's eyeballs and washing his skin with cold. The bar. Malloy. Rothman.

A siren in the distance.

The lingering shadow of Petrov and his cages.

Grady's lungs seized. He jerked his head back from Beaudreaux's hold, knocking the bruise at the base of his skull against the floor. None of the faces he could see staring down at him were Trang's, but he was there somewhere. Grady could feel him. "Let me up," he growled. Furrowing a breath, he tried to shift, coming up blocked against Beaudreaux's hands.

"Just stay still," Beaudreaux told him. "Ambulance is on the way."

The siren grew louder.

The murmur of the strange voices from the patrons grated over his skin.

He tried to protest further, but his body panicked, locking his voice up tight. Rolling his head, his face came level with the lower rungs of the bar stools. Shutting out the noise and the voices, he took a breath and moved his hand. Gripping shaky fingers around the base of the nearest stool, he pulled, toppling it against B's back. It hit, not hard, but clumsy, and the loosening of the grip on his shoulders was all that he needed. He wasted no time getting his legs under him, stumbling upward with a shove.

The world tilted. He caught his hand on the surface of another stool to get his balance, readying himself to run, and in that twisted moment, locked eyes with Beaudreaux. Two feet or a chasm between them, it was already too much. Too much time separated. Too many regrets. And expecting B to show up and save him from every single thing that'd gone wrong in his life had always been naive.

After the merest of seconds, Beaudreaux moved and Grady reacted, knocking his fist down against the edge of the loaded tray he'd left poised on the bar, sending mugs of beer crashing between them. The shattering of glass boomed loudly in his ears, scraping across his nerves, but he ignored the sensation—ignored the look of betrayal on Beaudreaux's face—and just went, kept going, and didn't look back.

In the alley, he turned towards the main street instead of the direction of his bike like Beaudreaux would expect. When he hit the opening on the thoroughfare the approaching ambulance was drawing attention in front of the bar and he darted away from it, counting air into his lungs and crossing the street without pause. He circled again immediately, turning off behind Mulligan's, resisting the urge to look behind him as he limp-jogged into the alley behind the used bookstore, trying to distance himself from the vague sound of Beaudreaux calling his name. He kept his speed up, breathing through the grey in his vision, turned the next corner, and ran right into Trang.

Trang was standing with his arms folded, shoulder to the wall, having tracked Grady from the opposite direction. He didn't even seem winded. Pose casual. Like he'd expected Grady to take this route.

The rain had stopped, leaving a cool-dank feeling in the air. The alley was soaked with it. The smell of wet asphalt. Slick steel. Rotting cardboard. It smelled like Petrov's cages. Like graphite and sawdust and people waiting to die.

"I didn't break any rules," Grady said carefully, stepping back cautiously, arms spread to his sides. "I already got you your list today, and Beaudreaux still doesn't know anything."

Trang pushed off his lean and stepped closer. "Not yet, anyway."

"Come on," said Grady, stiffening his muscles against the protest through his torso. "You wanted this to happen. Pet…" He stopped and swallowed. Working to control the trembling in his voice, he stilled his lungs and made himself cough up the name. "_Petrov_ said it himself—he wants Beaudreaux distracted. Beaudreaux can't investigate if he's distracted. I'm the biggest distraction he has. And he can't make the connection to Petrov if he's out looking for me."

Trang closed the gap slowly, fisting a gentle hand into Grady's shirt and rocking forward, breath warm on Grady's cheek. "Then he'd better not find you," he said, releasing his shirt. He drew back with intent, knocking out Grady's knee with a short kick to his leg. Grady dropped to the pavement, clenching his eyes, white light rounding over the pain. Trang twisted a hand in his hair, pulling his head up as he leaned down towards his ear. "Just remember, we are not finished with you yet. If the connection is made, we have nothing to lose. Do you understand?"

Grady nodded as best he could, hairs pulled tight off his scalp. Trang let go abruptly, running a kick into Grady's side. Grady folded, catching himself on his hands. Gravel rough on his palms. Dark shadows cinching around his vision. Every thought segmented and hazy.

Another kick came and the world flipped inside out.

By the time it corrected itself, Trang was gone, and Grady had no idea how much time he'd lost.

The once distant ambulance siren was silent and he could no longer hear any trace of Beaudreaux calling his name.

He breathed in on a shudder and wished he could stop shaking. Curling to his side, he drew his knees up, easing the strain through his core. He rolled the right side of his forehead against the asphalt, feeling it, cool and rough against the press of his skin. He tried to consider his options, tried to think of any place he knew where Beaudreaux would not look for him—any place Petrov would not have people watching him.

Eventually he rolled himself onto his knees, staying hunched over as his tried to find his center. Warm liquid smattered across the back of his hand. His nose was bleeding again. He ignored it, closed his eyes, and tried to breathe. Clenching his fingers, he twisted them into the gravel and eased his forehead to rest on the back of his knuckles.

In the distance, a car backfired and he flinched, knuckles abrading over the asphalt, seeing in his memory a woman with autumn eyes, hearing in his bones the echo of Petrov's gun.

**/**

**\**

tbc


	6. Chapter 6

This chapter references episodes and events from the show in a more loose and fast way than previous chapters. I don't delve into a lot of exposition with these references, but I believe there will be enough information provided within the context of the overall story for readers to stay with the plot. Basically, if you've seen the referenced episodes, all the better. If you haven't, you should still be able to deduce enough from the context to not get lost. Of course, if you do get lost, let me know.

This chapter may also contain a bit more... well, cheese, I guess, than the others. But, uh, every story needs a little. Right?

**/**

**Chapter Six**

**\**

Miguel dropped the last file into Willis's filing cabinet then locked it for the night. It was late. Already an hour past quitting, and it was raining again. After hunting around for his jacket, he leaned into the doorway out of Willis's office, spotting him on the couch. "Hey," he said. "You're not by any chance headed to the Rec Center?"

Willis looked up from the papers in his lap. "Is this you asking for a ride?"

Miguel smiled and shrugged. "Only if you're going anyway. Aren't you running the probation meeting tonight?"

"Where's your car?"

"Grady gave me a ride, but he can't pick me up, he's already clocked in at the bar. Don't worry about it though, I can take the bus."

"No, it's alright. The meeting is tonight." Willis glanced at the clock and stood. "And I don't mind getting there early." He turned around and caught his keys off the hook. "Besides, I'd rather you not take the bus."

Miguel laughed. "You're worried about me taking the bus now? Don't take this the wrong way, but not even Beaudreaux gets that paranoid."

Willis jangled the keys as he found his own jacket, glancing in Miguel's direction with an unapologetic glare. "I've been hearing a lot of things lately. Things I don't like hearing about. Seems the lines of territory between the sets aren't as stable as they once were. Someone's shaking things up. And colors, or no colors, traveling in and out of Shadow Dragon territory can't be the safest thing for you to be doing these days."

"Yeah, I've been hearing the same things. But I don't think it's me you have to worry about."

Willis leveled a look at him.

"Hey." Miguel held up his hands in surrender, giving a small waggle with his fingers. "Whatever's going on, I've got nothing to do with it. I swear. But I know for a fact the sets aren't out to push each other right now. If Shadow Dragons are tense, it's not because of K-Streeters. It's because in their territory they don't just answer to themselves and things are happening on a level they can't control. Escalation between the gangs would be more than they could deal with. They don't need more enemies."

"Just the same," said Willis, opening the front door and gesturing for Miguel to go ahead of him, "I prefer not to take chances. After you got kicked in the face last year, I don't intend to be the one to tell Adam about any more of your trips to the hospital."

"Head," said Miguel. "I got kicked in the head. And I'm pretty sure Beaudreaux still thinks I brought it on myself."

As Willis closed the door, the phone inside started to ring. "Let the machine pick it up," he told Miguel when he stopped. "I'll check it when I get back."

**/**

**\**

Pulling to the curb outside the center, Miguel spotted Clavo immediately. He was standing across the street, underneath the overhang of the Southside Tenement sign. Urgency was in his body language, but he was gazing deliberately in the opposite direction, like he was pointedly not waiting for Miguel.

Miguel shrugged his jacket up around his shoulders and popped the latch on his door, stepping into the drizzle. He peered through the rain, pressing his eyes to Clavo's back.

"Are you coming?" asked Willis, tapping the car's roof and gesturing toward the center. "If Cliff and Devon don't show, I'm going to need your help putting out the chairs."

"In a minute," said Miguel. "I'll meet you inside."

Willis flicked his eyes at Clavo, at the colors he sported, but said nothing, simply nodding as he turned around.

Miguel breathed gratefully and crossed the street, falling into step with Clavo without question, heading south, towards the boarded-up municipal building. Back towards home territory.

"Your boy showed up at the old hang out across from Luis's old casita," explained Clavo. "He's looking for you. How'd he know about that place anyway?"

Miguel glanced sideways. "My boy?"

Clavo just looked at him.

Miguel frowned and drew up short, putting a hand to Clavo's chest. "Grady?"

Clavo nodded. "I sent him over to Luis's and told him I'd find you. Right now, I'm the only one besides you who knows he's there, and by the way he looks, I'm thinking it should stay that way."

"The way he looks?"

"Wrecked. Like he's dragging trouble. Problemas serios."

"And he's waiting for me?"

"I just left him, but he seems kind of jumpy. Carlos and Alonzo are supposed to meet me there tonight. I don't know if he'll stay if they show. You tell me. He's your hermano, not mine."

"And the casa de Luis?"

"Empty until next week."

"Okay." He gripped a hand to Clavo's shoulder. "I'll take care of it. But I need you to go back to the center and help Willis with the chairs. Tell him I had to go meet my mother. Don't say anything else."

"Hey, vato, since when am I on probation?"

"Just do it. You owe me one, and something tells me Grady doesn't need him asking questions right now."

"Fine. But I think after this, maybe we're even for a while."

"Quizás," said Miguel. "Hey," he called as Clavo started to jog away. "Lose the colors before you go inside."

"Yeah, yeah." Clavo waved back in annoyance.

**/**

**\**

When he got to Luis's, none of the lights were on in the house.

Standing in the silence of the mudroom, Miguel left them that way. His chest expanded slowly in the dark, memories of Luis thickening the blood in his joints, making them ache the way they always did when he first entered. They were stronger lately—backed by the more recent images of Andrea being arrested in the kitchen for killing the G-Rock's leader. Being arrested and leaving Luis's baby without a mother. Being arrested for having done what Beaudreaux had convinced Miguel not to.

Cautiously, he walked through the hallway from the back entrance, listening for sound through the shadows.

The broken front window was covered over with plywood. A hammered sheet of corrugated metal braced the bottom half of the broken front door. And all around the interior, G-Rock bullet holes patterned the plaster.

Blood for blood for blood for blood.

He found Grady in the darkened kitchen, sitting on a wood chair between the table and the wall. Angled defensively so he could see out the window.

Stopping by the refrigerator, Miguel folded his arms, watching the lights from a passing car manipulate the shadows over Grady's face.

He looked like hell. Like the last warning sign on the eve of destruction.

In the quiet, the refrigerator's motor kicked in, humming weakly. Grady spoke without moving. "I wasn't sure if you still used this place—after Andrea." His voice was like smoke. Like it could evaporate in a moment and take him with it.

"Luis's father paid it off two years before he died. Andrea hasn't told me what she wants done with it yet. We've been keeping it for her. And for the baby." Miguel stepped closer to the table. "You have that look in your eye I don't like."

The flicker in Grady's gaze finally blinked in Miguel's direction. "I know," he said. A fine tremor belied his stillness, like a wild bird in a small cage. Blood or mud crusted the back edge of his jaw. Rust stained his collar. His hair was wet. "I'm sorry to show up like this. I just needed a place." He stopped, stared starkly out the window, then found Miguel's eyes again. "I just needed a place."

Slowly and deliberately, Miguel pulled out the chair on his side of the table and sat. "So you have a place," he said.

Lights from another car moved past the window. Grady held Miguel's stare then closed his eyes and dipped his head. A distorted stripe of pale silver idled across his shirt. A sweeping glow that disappeared as he breathed.

Miguel breathed with him, waiting. "I've never seen you look this bad. Ever. Not even with that pendejo, Nigel."

Grady opened his eyes. The streetlamp down on the corner lent them a dull light—showing some mixture of apology and fire.

And fear.

Miguel closed his mouth, tipping his head a fraction to the right. He was about to say something more when the ringing phone at the end of the table shattered the lull, startling them both.

Grady flinched—wide eyes darting towards it.

Miguel spread the fingers on one hand, holding them in the air until Grady focused towards him. He gave him a small nod, then curled his knuckles around the receiver. After the next ring, he brought it to his ear. "Mendez," he answered.

"Miguel." Beaudreaux breathed his name as though it meant reprieve. "I've been looking everywhere for you."

Grady leaned forward on the table, tense, elbows pressed to the wood.

Miguel closed his eyes, then opened them. "Beaudreaux, hey," he said, carefully casual. "What's up?"

"Grady's gone off the reservation. I think he's in real trouble and I'm hoping you can help me find him."

Miguel flicked his eyes at Grady's face. "What happened?"

"I'm still working on that part. But, listen, he knows I'm looking for him, so he's probably going to try to stay out of Little Saigon, which means you're the most likely person to get a line on him. I need you to put the word out. I'm not sure where he'll go, but if you see anything, or hear anything—if he contacts you—I need you to call me right away."

Miguel paused, pulling air through his teeth. He locked on Grady's gaze and didn't look away. "No," he finally said.

Silence folded around the line. Silence in the room. Silence in the house.

A car horn grunted in the distance, somewhere far down the street.

"No?" said Beaudreaux. "What do you mean, no?"

"I mean, no. If Grady's gone to ground, maybe he has a good reason."

"He's in trouble, Miguel. Real trouble. He needs help."

"And the only reason he'd even consider coming to me for that help is if he knows that I won't go to you."

Beaudreaux's voice bent sideways, tilting to one Miguel recognized—restrained frustration, excessively reasonable. "Look, I know the two of you feel some sort of need to cover for each other, but—"

"No," Miguel interrupted. "Not cover. That is never what this has been about."

"Really? Then why don't you tell me what it's about?"

"You really need me to say it?"

"Enlighten me."

Miguel clicked his teeth. He looked at Grady, sitting across the table in the fluttering darkness, eyes reflecting the barest slivers of light. "This is about trust, Beaudreaux. Trust and living up to the things you've taught us."

"You've gotta be kidding me. The things _I've _taught you?"

"Yes."

"This isn't what I've taught either one of you. And if you're thinking it is, I'm going to have to wonder if I've ever gotten through to you at all."

"When my parole ended and the G-Rocks were gunning for me, you knew Grady knew where I was, but you didn't ask him to tell you until the time was right. I know you weren't happy with me, but you were doing what you could for me anyway. And you respected Grady's silence because you knew he was doing the same thing."

Beaudreaux said nothing.

"See, Beaudreaux, even if we don't always say it, even if we don't always recognize it for what it is—we all feel a responsibility to this little familia we've been drafted into, the same way you do. But when the son can't go to the father—when he's off the reservation but still trying to stay on the planet—that's what brothers are for. And if Grady comes to me, it will only be because he knows I will not betray that."

Grady breathed silently in the dark.

Miguel slid his elbow onto the table, balancing his hand in the air like he was waiting to arm wrestle. Grady nodded and closed the grip quietly, cool fingers locking around the base of Miguel's thumb, some of the tension leaving his shoulders.

"He's hurt," said Beaudreaux. "Maybe seriously. He needs medical attention. If he's off the reservation or the planet, loyalty will mean nothing to him if he's dead."

"If he doesn't know he can come to me, maybe he would be dead already."

"Or maybe the two of you are just too stubborn to ask for help when you need it."

Shaking his head, Miguel tightened his knuckles around Grady's hand, holding his eyes. "If I see him, if he needs medical attention, I'll make sure he gets it. But that's the most I can promise you."

"Miguel," Beaudreaux began.

"There are monsters in the world, Beaudreaux," Miguel interrupted. "Sometimes you see us as children. You think you can go out and slay them all for us. But the truth is, some demons are bigger than others, some louder, some more real. And we're old enough to know that even you cannot kill them all." He waited a beat, then pulled the phone away from his ear.

"Miguel, wait. _Miguel_."

Dropping the receiver against the base of the cradle, Miguel cut the connection, ending the call.

Grady sighed slowly. "Thank you," he said, closing his other hand over the back of Miguel's fist before releasing the grip entirely. He winced then, leaning sideways in his chair, arm running close to his chest. "He's going to be looking for us."

Miguel watched him. "Then tell me I did the right thing, because you look like hell."

Grady lifted his eyes. "Beaudreaux finds me—people die."

Miguel swallowed and nodded. "Okay." He rose from his chair. Circling the table, he reached for Grady's arm, slinging it over his shoulder as Grady staggered upright. "I think I know where we can go."

**/**

**\**

tbc


	7. Chapter 7

Again, a warning for violent imagery.

**/**

**Chapter Seven**

**\**

Adam held the phone to his ear for several long seconds, listening to the stutter of the dial tone, trying to relax the muscles in his neck. Finally, he drew it away from his head and dropped it on its hook, letting it rattle with the force. Then he picked it up and let it rattle again. In his peripheral, he could see Malloy and Rothman exchanging glances.

"Problem, Sarge?"

Adam grunted. "Obviously." He rested his hands on his hips, trying to keep his agitation in check. Sweeping his eyes around the empty bar, he let them linger on the spot where the beer mugs had toppled from the counter, remembering Grady's face in that split second before—hurt and lost, like he was eight years old all over again. He looked back at Rothman, blinking to shake the image. "We need an APB out on Grady… and Miguel. He'll be gone by the time we get there but we should send a unit by Luis's place just in case."

Malloy leaned forward on her elbows. "You think Miguel's seen Grady?"

"Seen him. Talked to him." Adam waved a hand in the air. "Or he's with him right now and won't say." He rubbed the hand down his head, hooking his fingers on the back of his neck. "All he would give me was some song and dance about not being able to tell me anything because Grady might need a place to go if I can't help him." Drawing close to the bar, he dropped his hand and knocked the surface with his fist. "I swear, if I'd known the way those two would influence each other, I would have tried harder to keep them apart."

Malloy frowned. "What are you talking about? You never tried to keep them apart. If anything you've encouraged them to be there for each other."

Adam gave her a look. "Now you too?"

"Adam," she countered. "If Grady is with Miguel, isn't that good thing? If he really wanted to do something stupid, he'd stay away from all of us."

"Right, because the two of them are known for their calm and rational decision making. You'll forgive me if I'm not comforted."

"That's not fair." Malloy tucked a strand of hair behind her ear and stepped closer. "Look, if I got the gist of what Miguel just told you, maybe he's right and you just don't want to admit it. With Miguel may not be exactly where you want him, but for whatever reason, Grady doesn't feel he can bring this to you yet. Maybe Miguel is as close as he can get."

"But that's exactly what I don't understand." Adam pounded the bar again. "Grady should know by now he can come to me with anything, but for some reason he doesn't. Even with Nigel and that damn Circle of Death, he went to Miguel. He can't trust me with whatever the hell is going on, but Miguel? Oh, no, Miguel he can trust. _Miguel_ he can go to."

"Adam, that's not fair, to you or Grady. We don't know enough of what's going on to say what this is about. It may have nothing to do with trust. Grady has some dark secrets, we know that, and whatever's going on, maybe he just needs some time to think it through. He's been misguided in the past but he loves you, and you and I both know that wins out for him every time."

"Yeah, Sarge," Rothman spoke up hesitantly. "Didn't you tell me once that Grady sometimes does the wrong thing for the right reasons, but he usually comes to you in the end? Maybe this is one of those times."

"No," said Adam, shaking his head. "No, you don't…" He shoved off the bar and turned around. Taking a deep breath, he tried to slow the rush of frustration through his blood. "You don't understand."

For a space, there was silence. Then the soft creak of Rothman shifting on his stool and the gentle sound of Malloy taking a step. "Adam, what is it?"

Unlocking the clench of his teeth, Adam struggled to get the words out. "I didn't find him," he finally said, turning back to face them.

Malloy's eyebrows cinched together. "What are you talking about?"

"Grady," he said. "I didn't find him. He found me."

Malloy's expression drew light with comprehension. "Adam," she began.

"No." He didn't let her continue. "I left an eight-year-old boy behind in a hell most of the world can't even imagine. And every day since… all those years I kept thinking about him... wondering where he was. Always hoping that he was okay. That he was somewhere happy. Someplace safe. But all my worst fears—everything I didn't want to picture happening, every situation I didn't even want to consider him being stuck in, turned out to be exactly where he was."

Glancing from Malloy to Rothman and back, he took another steadying breath, voice dropping slightly. "And now that I know… I picture what he must have been thinking during all that time. I picture him wondering why I never came back for him—why I didn't help him when he needed it. And I can't help but think if I'd just found _him_—by a year, six months, a day—but if I'd just found him instead of him having to find me… maybe he'd trust me enough to come to me with stuff like this."

"Adam, you never stopped looking," Malloy said quietly.

He started to nod, then shook his head, pressing his hands into the bar. "But in my own way, I gave up on him. When I finally left Vietnam, I told myself he'd already been processed out of the country and that'd I'd find him back in the States, or Canada, but I never should have left until I knew for sure. And by then, it was too late. I didn't know where to keep looking." He snorted, leaning forward on his palms. "You know, when he showed up here last year, going after Hardin—I was so hurt that he hadn't looked for me right away. So… so frustrated that he hadn't come to me sooner. Angry even. But what was he supposed to think? He was eight years old when I left. He didn't know if I really wanted him. For all he knew, I'd taken the first chance I got not to be saddled with a kid and took off. Maybe part of him still isn't sure that I _did_ look for him. He would trust me otherwise, wouldn't he? He would come to me." He curled his knuckles under, feeling the press of marble against his skin, silence retaking the space around his words.

Malloy opened her mouth a bare fraction, then closed it, holding his gaze.

Rothman was frowning, hand loose around the base of his coffee cup, a distant look on his face. "Maybe he did," he mumbled.

Adam took his eyes from Malloy and looked over. "What was that?"

Rothman focused and glanced up. "I, uh, I said… maybe he did… go to you, I mean."

Adam frowned, shifting straight, waiting.

"Last week," Rothman explained, hesitantly clearing his throat. "Grady came into the station. He was… he seemed… just freaked out, I guess. When he first came in, for a minute I actually thought he was going to pass out right there in the bullpen." Rothman tapped his cup, glancing down absently, like he was replaying the memory in his mind, then refocused on Adam's face. "He was looking for you."

Adam came around the bar slowly. "Why didn't you tell me about this?"

Swiveling on the stool to maintain eye contact, Rothman answered. "It was the same day as the Foley shooting. You were downtown with Pine and the commissioner. I offered to call and get you back to the station but Grady said not to. And after that—I mean, the station was a mad house at the time. I assumed whatever it was he needed, he would catch up with you about it later." He tapped the coffee cup again, middle finger bouncing against the base as he glanced briefly at Malloy. "Guess he didn't."

Adam stared, processing the information. He stepped back carefully, sinking into the chair at the table behind him, a hollow sensation forming in his gut. He tried to remember when it was he'd first started thinking maybe Grady wasn't doing so well. He tried to think when it was he'd first started thinking there might be something to worry about. "Last week?" he asked.

Rothman nodded.

Adam's frown deepened. Had he even seen Grady that day? Talked to him? Anything?

He'd seen Malloy that morning, at the bar before work, and Miguel a little later, when he'd come by the station to finally sign the witness statements regarding the G-Rock's attack at Luis's house. Then the call had come in, and all the details of the remainder of the day became eclipsed by that crime scene.

The mother and father, Foley and his wife, wearing contrasting shades of grey—shot while kneeling in the front foyer, blindfolds over their eyes. The girl with the auburn hair, shot upstairs in the bedroom with the green-painted walls. And the boy. The eight-year-old. Brown hair. Pale skin. Skinny knees curled up to his chin as he sat slumped over on his side in the back hallway, blood under his head. Blood spatter on the carpet. On the wall. Blood spatter across the deep blue of his crisp, clean t-shirt.

Adam had thought of Grady then. He'd gone out to his vehicle and sat with his knuckles curled around the steering wheel for what felt like hours, jaw clenched so tight, he thought he might crack teeth.

"Sarge?" prompted Rothman. "What do you want me to do? You still want that APB?"

Slowly, after a long minute, Adam nodded his head, then stopped, looking up to meet Rothman's eyes. He remembered Rothman at the crime scene. He flashed on an image of Rothman standing motionless at the base of the stairs as the M.E. pushed past him to get up to the girl's room with the gurney. Saying nothing when Adam came back inside. No judgements. They'd finished processing the scene and returned to the station, trying to get as much information as they could before the story hit the news.

Then chaos descended. And somewhere in the midst of that chaos Grady had come looking for him and found Rothman instead. He'd come looking just hours after those murders and Adam was suddenly trying to figure out—would it be too much of a coincidence if those two acts were related, or too much of a coincidence if they weren't?

He licked his lips and finally spoke. "Kelsey's back down at the docks running more interviews into the break-ins. Find her, then head to the station—see if you can pull phone records for the dojo and the bar. Do an ATL on Miguel. See what you can find at Luis's. Maybe check the hang-out on Alameda. Get back here when you can."

"You got it," said Rothman, slipping off his stool.

Adam took a breath, rubbing a hand across his chin.

"What do you think is going on?" asked Malloy.

Pausing by the door, Rothman turned to hear the answer.

"I wish I had clue," said Adam.

**/**

**\**

tbc


	8. Chapter 8

**/**

**Chapter Eight**

**\**

The top floor of the old municipal building had four barren windows, arched end to end on the west wall. Ceiling to floor. There was no glass to cut the view—to inlay a reflection or provide the illusion of separation from the world—but the roof was solid, blocking the wind, trapping the light. It felt oddly secure. Oddly ideal. Even after the hesitation of having to limp up four flights of chipped marble and dusty cement.

Sitting with his back pressed to the balustrade above the stairs, Grady stared down towards the dying storm, watching mist rise off the street, turning the landscape dull and dream-like. All dismally serene. He blinked slowly, keeping his breathing steady and even, trying to find his center.

There wasn't one to be found. It was an illusion. Their surroundings were surreal. The sense of cover was a fantasy. Any moment now, Petrov was going to come out of the shadows and put a bullet in the back of Miguel's head. Then he'd stare at Grady, watching his reaction with dead eyes. _These are the rules. You know this._

Subtly, Grady rolled his hands into fists. He should have kept Miguel out of this.

Oblivious, Miguel leaned over his side, pressing another square of gauze to the rough abrasions on his chest, face grim with the pointlessness of the gesture. Like putting a band-aid on a concussion, or a butterfly strip on a broken bone. The fingers slid as they smoothed the tape, catching the low edge of bruising under Grady's ribs and he flinched, holding his breath as flames scorched his lungs. A sense of vertigo overtook him. His vision sloped forward and the skyline beyond gathered itself together, rolling in at the edges like a scroll.

"No, no, come on," said Miguel, suddenly a million miles away. "Stay with me."

Grady unlocked his jaw and breathed deeply. It burned, but he held the fire, expanding his ribs slowly until the world rolled itself right again.

Miguel's forehead was drawn into a wrinkle. Eyes dark.

"I'm good," Grady told him. He put his own hand over the gauze on his chest, checking the tape before pulling his shirt back into place. He coughed lightly. "They're bruised. Not broken. I can tell the difference."

Flicking his eyes up from Grady's torso, Miguel rocked his chin. "As comforting as that is, it's your head I'm worried about. In more ways than one." He sat back on his heels, dropping the leftover gauze to the floor with a demeanor of defeat. "I'm pretty sure this isn't what Beaudreaux had in mind when I promised him I'd get you medical attention."

Grady shook his head. "We can't go to the clinic," he countered. Again. "Any clinic."

"No one can be everywhere at once."

"Close enough," said Grady. "Beaudreaux will be looking for us and they're watching Beaudreaux. Trang was inside the bar, with Malloy, and there's more than just him. They're tapped in at the police station. Probably the dojo. I don't know where else."

Miguel leaned back against the adjacent pillar, crown of his head resting on the brick, frustration in the guise of casual. "So when's your next job?"

"Tomorrow night," Grady answered. "They've been moving me around to different docks. From what Rothman said at the bar, I think they're trying to compile all the information they can to reconstruct this Foley guy's network, take control of the pipeline. As much of it as they can, anyway."

"Then these guys are organized crime."

Grady bent his good knee up, using it to prop his elbow as he ran a hand over his head. He could feel his pulse behind his ears, thudding through his skull. "That's my guess."

"If they are, they're new around here. And I'm sensing the locals don't like it. I knew someone was shaking things up, I just didn't know who."

"Yeah," said Grady. He dug his fingers deeper into his scalp.

Miguel's tone dropped slightly. "Sooner or later," he said, "this is all going to go ka-boom. You know that, right?"

Grady sniffed, reaching down for the water next to his hip. He unscrewed the cap off the bottle and took a sip. His hand shook, sloshing water onto his shirt. It was an old Pepsi two-liter. The lingering taste of cola stuck to his lip.

Miguel sighed. "Fine. Then tell me again what you know about them. You said one of these guys was a guard in the prison camp? In Vietnam?"

Setting the water back, Grady nodded as he wiped his mouth. "Trang. The camp was overcrowded but I kind of stood out."

"You would," Miguel agreed.

"He used to set me up to fight. He'd take bribes for the… _opportunity_. Then he'd take bets on the outcome. That place was all about corruption. Hardly any food. Even less clean water. Everyone packed together. Murderers with thieves. 'Religious dissidents' with ex-soldiers." _Guys just trying to kill each other. _Without moving his head, Grady looked sideways at Miguel. "There was a lot of opportunity."

"Did you already know how to fight?"

"I'd learned some basics. When Beaudreaux was laid up after being shot, there was this guy in the local village teaching all the kids martial arts. I loved it. It kept me… focused. After that I started picking stuff up wherever I could. Even in the camp, man—especially in the camp, I'd hang around anyone I could get to teach me anything they could. Besides Beaudreaux, it was the one thing in my life that made me feel less afraid."

"Dude, how old were you?"

Grady tapped the cap on the bottle, pressing his thumb against the top. "Twelve. Thirteen. I…" He frowned, feeling a pit grow in his stomach. "Young enough that I still thought… I still had this fantasy, you know. Beaudreaux would come storming in, all bad-ass special-forces, and..."

Miguel was quiet.

Grady glanced at him and looked down, clearing his throat. "Anyway, a few years later, I gave up the fantasy and escaped. Me and this other kid in the camp. We hit the streets and, eventually, made it to Hong Kong."

"And Petrov? You said you thought he was Russian. I didn't think Russia sent soldiers into Vietnam."

Grady stared at Miguel's face. Beaudreaux had been right about him. He should go to college. He had the mind for it. Facts. Context. He swallowed, trying to form an answer. Petrov's name kept getting struck in his throat. A white-hot pulse flashing over the nerves below his sternum whenever the name got all the way to his teeth. It made him want to scream it just to get the anticipation over with. _Petrov! Petrov! Petrov! _He unlocked his jaw, pushing the name slowly off his tongue. "Petrov. I don't… I don't remember why he was there. I just know he was."

"This dude has a lot of power over you."

Grady tilted his eyes away and said nothing.

Miguel laced his hands together, touching his fingers to his eyes. After a moment, he let them drop. "We need Beaudreaux on this," he finally said.

"We _can't_."

"He's looking for us anyway, and it's only a matter of time. He'll find you. He'll find me. He'll find this Petrov guy. Those people in the cages you're talking about… they're dead already. Petrov and Trang have set you up to fail." He took a breath. "It's like a piñata. These dudes come to town, crashing the party they weren't invited to. They smash open the prize and make all the other kids start scrambling around—meanwhile, they gather as much candy as they can for themselves until time runs out. But time will run out. It always does. We need Beaudreaux."

Grady scrubbed the heel of a hand across his face, feeling his pulse quicken, feeling the sensation of static ride the nerves under his skin. "I know. But I can't… I _can't_. Beaudreax's system isn't going to work here. And I can't go to anyone else in the department. If they start looking in his direction... if Petrov's name even pops up on a police investigation… All he needs is an excuse. Maybe he's going to kill them anyway, but if I break the rules now…"

"Then they die and you end up in the cage."

Grady flexed the muscles down his back. "I've survived cages."

Miguel pushed off the pillar, getting to his feet. He paced towards the windows, then turned. "This Petrov guy—does he know what Nigel did to you?"

"Why?"

"Because you were what, sixteen? Seventeen? Nigel branded you, put you in a cage, and made you wait your turn to die. This dude wants your cooperation, so he puts people in cages and makes them wait to die."

The pit in Grady's stomach grew wider. He moved his hand to the back of his neck, scratching fingers against the ache in his head. The room was starting to spin again. He tipped his eyes sideways at Miguel and swallowed. "I'm not sure he needs that kind of reason. I think Petrov is just… a bad man."

Miguel was silent, but a long moment later he blinked, giving Grady a deliberate look. "You said Petrov plays by his own rules."

Grady straightened. "What are you thinking?"

"I'm thinking, if we can't go to the cops. Maybe there's someone else we can go to."

"Who?"

Miguel held his hands to his sides. "The people's whose piñata was smashed. Rafferty. Scolari. Castano. Chen Dao."

Grady stared. "No way."

"No, hear me out. This guy is organized crime. With the police, it's war. With Rafferty, or Castano, it's business. They have a vested interest in finding him. They have a vested interest in not having more blood and heat in the city. And they're not the ones Petrov will be watching."

Grady pushed himself to his feet. His knee had stiffened as he sat and he listed sideways before catching his balance. "And how exactly do you see this happening?"

"I think someone, unobtrusive like myself, should do a little networking." Miguel reached down for his jacket, starting to shrug it on.

"No." Limping forward, Grady reached out to catch his sleeve. "We gotta talk this through. We can't just… I can't let you. This is my problem. If anything happened to you because of me…"

"Hey." Miguel smiled. "You forget who you're talking to. Community relations, remember? I'm good with animals."

**/**

**\**

tbc


	9. Chapter 9

**/**

**Chapter Nine**

**\**

"Adam, I don't know how I feel about this." Malloy closed the top drawer of Grady's dresser, dropping her arms to her sides.

Adam looked up from the box he'd dragged from under Grady's bed, eyes sympathetic but determined. "I know it feels like a violation of privacy, but I don't care how good a reason he thinks he has for what he's doing, I can't just sit back and do nothing."

"I know," she said. "I wouldn't expect you to." She turned, scanning the room—the meditation wall, the bed, the photos. Everything she found represented the Grady she already knew. If there were secrets here, she wasn't seeing them. "I'm just not sure what we're supposed to be looking for."

"Me neither," said Adam, dropping the book in his hand back into the box. "Maybe nothing. Just keep looking."

She tucked a stray hair behind her ear and reached for the shelves next to the wardrobe, pulling out the laundry bag Grady had been messing with that morning. Pushing through a moment of hesitation, she unlaced the top and let the clothes tumble onto the dresser. Picking through the pile, she unrolled a pair of Grady's jeans, thinking maybe he'd left something in one of the pockets. They unfurled slowly, sticky instead of loose. Immediately, she stopped breathing. "Adam," she said sharply.

He stood quickly, coming over. She turned sideways to let him see. The left pant leg was matted with dried blood, stained above and below the knee as though it'd pooled around his kneecap, like he'd been kneeling. It was stiff and dark but still steeped with the hard smell of copper. Gingerly, Adam touched the hem. His jaw muscle tight.

"That can't be… can that be Grady's blood?" she asked. It seemed like a lot—too much for him to have lost and still be able to walk around, even knowing he'd passed out just hours ago.

Adam shook his head. "I don't know. I... I don't know."

Malloy lifted her hand, letting it hover over the dark surface. Staticky silence crowded her ears. Adam gripped her wrist loosely, gently pulling it back. "I'll need to get this into the lab," he said, setting the world back to normal speed. He gave her wrist a soft squeeze then let it go and rubbed his face. "I'm going to have to go back into the station, find Rothman and Kelsey, see if they've had any luck with Miguel."

"What about the leaks?"

"Don't worry about the leaks. I doubt this is the kind of information they're looking for anyway." But he glanced away as he spoke, eyes dark and surface gritty, like sheet metal.

"What are they looking for?" she said without facing him. The walls bounced the question hollowly back at her. She did not expect an answer.

Predictably, Adam stayed silent. After a staggered second, he set a hand to her shoulder. "I'll handle it."

"This is bad, this time," she said dully, focused on the jeans. "Isn't it?"

"Looks that way."

Folding her arms close to her body, Malloy closed her mouth, the gap between them and Grady feeling wider by the minute. What would happen to the rest of them—to Adam—if that gap widened too far? She'd seen that destructive streak loop itself around Adam's life again and again while she'd been growing up, the missing and mysterious Grady holding power over Adam even in the midst of her father's death.

"Hey," Adam said, trying too hard to inject calm into his voice. It sounded odd after everything else he'd said that day, him suddenly trying to be the voice of reason. "Don't give up on him yet, okay?"

She shook herself. "Of course not."

He squeezed harder. "We've survived worse than this. Aren't you the one that keeps trying to tell me that?"

She nodded again, as if it were a fact. And maybe it was. Even before they were a family, they'd faced war and death—varied forms of pestilence and famine—and they'd all come out alive. Yet this felt different. This felt like all of them and none of them. And even if she were suddenly able to identify this, this current plague, and rate it on a scale against what they'd faced before, she suddenly couldn't think why it should be comforting.

She didn't think Adam could either.

**/**

**\**

Sitting at the bar with the books in front of her, variegated lights dimmed to orange-blue dullness, Malloy tried to concentrate. Her fingers flipped through the receipts, but her eyes kept reading the numbers backwards and she kept losing her place with the calculator.

The _Closed_ sign had been sitting on the door since Grady's flight from the barroom floor. The blinds were drawn. The whole bar silent as the dead. It'd been that way for hours. She had no reason to stay and still couldn't get herself to leave. Drumming her fingers on the surface of the paper, she stopped and spread her hand, trapping the pen under her thumb.

All around her, it was quiet, clean, and empty. Abruptly, she shoved the calculator away, letting it sail off the bar and clatter across the floor. Slumping her head into her palms, she increased the pressure around her eye sockets and tried to be still.

She startled when the phone rang, heartbeat spiking in her chest. Catching her breath, she shoved off her stool and rounded towards it, plucking it up quickly. "Adam?"_ Good news. Have good news._

Nothing.

She balanced the base of the receiver with her other hand, steadying it against the shake in her fingers. "Grady?"

Silence.

"Grady, listen to me. You just need to tell us where you are, okay? Just tell us where you are, and we'll come get you. We'll come get you, and you can come home."

She waited.

"Grady?"

There was only silence. Silence and the swift click and dial-tone that indicated disconnect. She listened to the pulsing sound for an absurdly long moment, then carefully set the phone back on its cradle.

**/**

**\**

tbc


	10. Chapter 10

**/**

**Chapter Ten**

**\**

Adam hung up the phone and stood, having concluded a pointless ten-minute conversation with Miguel's mother that told him only that Miguel didn't have the car, and a BOLO on the license plate would be useless. He apologized for waking her so early, or so late, depending on how you looked at it, and lied through his teeth to convince her Miguel wasn't in any trouble. It felt placating and wrong, and he hated when people did the same to him—namely Grady—but the other option felt worse.

"Everything alright?"

Turning his head, Adam saw Officer Hadley leaning over from the file cabinet. "Yeah," he answered, drawing back and tapping a knuckle over an inert file on his desk. "Everything's fine."

"You should be off, shouldn't you?" said Hadley, fiddling with the paper in his hand. "But I guess Pine's got everyone pretty active right now."

Adam clicked a molar. Hadley was a good enough officer as far as he knew, but the reality of leaks in the potentially sinking ship the station had become had returned to the front of his mind the moment he'd sat back in his chair. "Couldn't sleep," he answered curtly.

A loud clatter from the hallway interrupted their exchange and they both jerked, stepping simultaneously towards the commotion to figure out what was going on. Down by _Booking and Receiving,_ four young men in handcuffs had broken away from their arresting officers, and were trying to tackle each other while still having their hands linked together. Adam started forward, but another voice boomed and the night officers seemed to be getting things under control. With hands on his hips, he sighed, and let Hadley keep going.

"Sarge?" said Rothman, coming up behind him, then gripping his elbow and tugging him towards the corridor wall outside the bullpen. "I thought we were supposed to keep our presence here to a minimum," he continued, voice low.

"Circumstances dictated otherwise," Adam replied without expounding. He jerked his head towards the booking desk. "How long has this stuff been going on?"

"Off and on all night, the way I hear it. Things are getting a bit more intense around the city. The unofficial mob convention we've got going on didn't exactly bring diplomats to our door."

"Right," said Adam, trying to compartmentalize. "What have you found on Miguel?"

Rothman sighed, glancing over his shoulder. At first, Adam thought he was checking for eavesdroppers, but saw he was actually making eye contact with Kelsey. She caught his nod and started towards them. "Miguel wasn't at the house," Rothman began to explain, "or anywhere else we looked. No sign of Grady either. And before you ask, nothing of note came up on the phone records, at least not that immediately stood out. We did run into a couple of Miguel's old buddies at Luis's, but they insisted they hadn't seen him. I was going to bring them in but didn't see the point, especially after we found this." He turned to Kelsey, who passed a closed file into Adam's hands.

"What's is it?" asked Adam.

"They're grainy," said Kelsey, nodding at him to take a look. "But I'm pretty sure that's Grady."

Adam flipped the file open. There were three images inside. Hazy stills, black and white, angled like you'd see from a security camera. The first was nearly unrecognizable, but the last two—Grady, dressed darkly, talking to another man who was facing away from the camera. A man a hair's breadth shorter than Grady, wearing a jacket with the hood flipped up.

"This was a harbor security camera?"

"An old one," confirmed Kelsey. "But still in use. The camera was set up to take still shots on a timer. This is dock 29 when it was hit three nights ago. Grady probably didn't…" She stopped, looking apologetic, and amended her words. "Whoever has been breaking in probably didn't know it was there. They got to nearly all the other cameras around the harbor on the last two break-ins, but missed this one."

Adam flipped back to the middle picture, staring at the flash of white in Grady's eyes, depicting a sideways glance, hard edges of restraint trapping the tension in his lanky arms. He could feel Rothman and Kelsey's eyes on him, waiting for his reaction. He wasn't sure he had one. Witnesses to the break-ins had loosely identified some of Rafferty's goons, then later, a couple of Chen Dao's Shadow Dragons, and at dock 35, another camera had caught a two-bit felon with ties to both Scolari and Castano, smiling as he walked away from the dock-house not long after a reported smash up.

Now Grady was on that list.

"You don't seem surprised," hedged Kelsey.

"I don't know what I am," Adam answered. He closed the file. "I have no idea what he's mixed up in here, or why, but this is more of a starting point than I had an hour ago."

"So you do think he's part of the break-ins," Rothman stated cautiously. "You know this picture doesn't prove anything. He could have been down there for a completely different reason."

Adam appreciated what Rothman was trying to do, but stalled it off. "If Grady is involved, I don't think he's involved willingly. What I do know is that he started acting off around the same time the Foley family was murdered. In the meantime, I've got a bloody pair Grady's jeans, Miguel not giving me a thing, and a whole damn city that seems to be going crazy. It's too much of a coincidence."

"It's a big city, Sarge. Grady could be mixed up in anything."

"But this is exactly the kind of thing he would try to keep from me," Adam said severely, clamping down on the worry and the green twinge of betrayal in his gut.

Kelsey was frowning. "You think Grady's mixed up with the Foley murders specifically?"

Adam toggled his head. "I don't know." He looked at Rothman. "But according to you, he showed up at the station that same day, looking like he'd seen a ghost. Then somehow changed his mind about whatever he was going to tell me. He's in these pictures. He's had run-ins with nearly every major crime king in the city, and so have I. There has to be a connection."

"Are you thinking he witnessed something?" Kelsey pushed.

"I don't know," Adam answered honestly. He flipped open the file and rolled the names through his mind again, trying to make them fit. Foley, Mancini. Rafferty, Scolari, Castano. Chen Dao. Grady.

"He's got his thinking face on," Rothman muttered.

Omitting Grady's, Adam parted his lips and said the last four names aloud. "Chen Dao. Scolari. Castano. Rafferty. What do they all have in common?"

Rothman and Kelsey traded looks. "Organized Crime," shrugged Rothman.

"Heavy smuggling operations," added Kelsey.

"Yeah." Adam nodded. "Meaning they all had a vested interest in Foley staying alive. If one of them had Foley killed, why now? Killing him, they may have damaged their rivals' business, but they've damaged their own as well. At least for a while. If one of them ordered it, the benefit had to outweigh the cost."

"Talk about keeping all your eggs in one basket," muttered Rothman. "So for which one would it outweigh the cost?"

Adam opened his mouth, then stopped, lifting his head as two patrolmen brushed by and glanced uneasily at their suspicious huddle. He lowered his voice. "Think about this. Who gains the most by upsetting the applecart?"

There was a beat of silence. "Someone who doesn't have any apples," answered Kelsey.

He nodded at her. "Exactly. We don't have a mob convention going on for nothing. We need to stop looking at the known criminals in the area, and start concentrating on new faces. Who's trying to get a toehold into the city? Who might have a connection to Mancini?"

"Russian mob," said Rothman, straightening like he'd just had an epiphany.

Adam raised an eyebrow. "There are a lot of new faces in town, Rothman."

"I know that. But up until now, we've gone on the assumption that Mancini was either independent, or the rumors that he was a made guy for Scolari are true. And we had reason. When I was checking into it, I found Mancini has criminal ties through his father that go all the way to Sicily. But his mother…"

"Russian?"

"Born in Moscow. Grandfather did a few stints in Lubyanka Prison, specific charges unknown, but he's trained in security, and was heavily suspected of facilitating a drug smuggling operation from Afghanistan a few years back. He split and came west two years ago. And you've read the federal alerts—Russian mob has been expanding since '88. If we're looking at a group that wants a toehold…"

"We can't assume, based on that alone. We need more. I don't want to go running in the wrong direction on this. We're behind enough as it is. And if Mancini is connected to the Russian Mob, it's a broad base. Unknown. We need to know who, exactly, is pulling his strings."

"We have limited options there, Sarge. Mancini still isn't talking and he isn't likely to start. The alternative is to go through official channels and pull profiles, which further begs the question—how do we pull or request files in a station that seems to be leaking like the titanic? Case in point. After those were developed, Kelsey got back to that camera to see if it'd caught anything else, and it'd been smashed."

"Have you talked to Pine recently?"

Rothman nodded, but his expression wasn't encouraging. "He has a few suspects, but nothing specific on who's leaking."

"Okay." Adam scrubbed a hand over his face. "Pull files. Make the phone calls. Do the search anyway. Try to stick to hard copies and be discrete, but if you have to go to the computer or phone through official channels, do it. At most, it will tell whoever's watching that we're getting closer, and I'm not sure I care if they know that. Leave a message with Malloy if you find anything."

"Where are you going to be?"

"I'm going to talk to Willis. See if I can figure out when he last saw Miguel. And he's usually tapped into the city—I can see if he's heard anything. Russian or otherwise."

"Be careful," called Kelsey.

"You too."

He waved as he turned, walking towards the doors, and stopped. Willis was already in front of him, hands in his pockets at the end of the hallway, looking uncomfortably prudent as he glanced around the florescent-lit bustle of the straggling nightshift.

"Teddy? What are you doing here?"

**/**

**\**

Adam double-checked the hallway outside the break room to make sure they were alone then pulled another chair and gestured for Willis to sit. "Did Malloy call you?"

Willis frowned. "Why would Malloy call me?"

Adam shook his head, sinking down across the table, trying to let go of the white-knuckled feeling that kept bleeding his joints. "Never mind. It's late. You need something?"

But Willis had already caught the undertone. He tipped his head, eyes evaluating. "Should Malloy have called me?"

"It's nothing," said Adam. He waved a hand to deflect.

Willis waited a beat, watching him. "That murder case from last week—still keeping you troubled?"

Adam folded his elbows onto the table and slung him a look. Willis shifted his scrutiny. "Grady then. Is he okay?"

"No," Adam breathed. "No, he is not." He trundled his hands into fists and rubbed the left one over his chin. "He's mixed up in something. Something bad. Top it off—he bolted from the bar after passing out cold about…" he checked his watch, "ten hours ago. He's hurt and he's in trouble."

"And you're sitting here looking as twisted as he had you looking when he first showed up going after Hardin. You having that nightmare again?"

Adam locked his jaw, but the echo came unbidden, cracking his cheekbone. _That's for leaving me in Da Lat! _He drew up sullen and tight, afraid if he gave the thought volume it'd turn to reality.

Willis lifted a hand. "Don't worry, I'm not here to be your counselor right now." He switched tracks. "Is Grady why you've been looking for Miguel? Or is he mixed up in something else?"

Grunting, Adam loosened his arms, grasping tentatively at the reason he'd wanted to seek Willis out in the first place. "Best I can figure, Miguel is running interference for him. Meanwhile, the entire city is turning into a powder keg." He jabbed a finger at the table. "You know, those two pick a hell of a time to go off the grid."

"Yeah," said Willis, eyeing him. "I figured something was going on after Miguel disappeared from the probation meeting before we even got in the door, then sent Clavo back to help me set up in his place."

"Clavo? Clavo Reyes, Clavo?"

"Yep. Told me Miguel had to go meet his mother and wouldn't say anything else. Literally. Scowled the entire time he was in there. Wouldn't answer any other questions. When I got your message back at the apartment, I got worried. As you noted, things are a little intense these days, even in the probation meeting."

Adam narrowed his eyes. "You've talked to him—haven't you?"

"Miguel," admitted Willis. "Not Grady. I was calling around trying to get a line on him for you. He found me outside my apartment about an hour ago—said he needed me to get you a message, and here I am."

"What's the message?"

"He wants you to follow a tip he heard about the break-ins in the harbor. Said it was important."

Sitting back, Adam chuffed lightly out his nose. It would have been too easy, he thought, to imagine Miguel might have actually had something to say about Grady. "And why isn't he talking to me about this?"

"Good question. I asked him the same thing and he wouldn't say."

"Okay, I'll bite. Who does he want me to look into?"

"He said you should focus on Rafferty. Drop everything else you're investigating—that's an exact quote—and focus on Rafferty."

"He said Rafferty's behind all this?"

Willis drew back with a quizzical look. "He didn't exactly go into detail. Trust me, I tried to get him to. All he would say is _make sure Beaudreaux watches Rafferty_—also an exact quote."

"So why do I get the feeling this is misdirection?"

"You tell me. I feel like I'm playing translator when I don't speak either language. What exactly is the issue here?"

Hesitating, with a glance at the door, Adam tweaked the file Kelsey had given him, then spread it forward on the table. "Those murders last week sparked a rushed attempt to consolidate information on the illegal imports pipeline. We've had smash and grabs up and down the docks ever since Foley's murder hit the news. Most of the break-ins are being reported as simple vandalism. Some say there are logs and files maybe gone. Nothing else." He dipped his chin at the middle photo. "Grady's mixed up in it, I just can't figure how. And he isn't talking. At least not to me."

Willis peered forward without moving. One simple creased line appeared in his forehead. "Why not?"

"Good question." The frustration welled over. "You know, I really thought we were getting somewhere. After Nigel, I thought he was starting to trust me again. Completely. I thought he was starting to get the idea of what it means to be family." He snorted. "Obviously not."

"That's not what I meant. You know Grady. You know Grady better than anyone. In the past, when he's been in trouble… why hasn't he gone to you? Why, really, wouldn't he come to you now? What's the motivation?"

Adam's pulse thudded into his fingertips. He stumbled over the automatic denial on his lips and went still, caught in the angle of the question. The hollow room had acquired an echo and he wondered for the first time if maybe he'd brought it in with him. He cleared his throat and heard it reverberate off the painted cinder block walls. "Pride," he mused, then coughed, trying to settle his brain. "His damn messed-up code of honor. Not trusting the system. The cops." He breathed again, slowly, and his voice swung low as he snorted. "Thinking he's protecting me." He shifted in his chair and looked up, meeting Willis's eyes. "Or protecting someone else."

Cracking the neutrality in his expression, Willis said his next sentence carefully. "If I'm the one playing go between, not to mention Miguel..." He tapped his thumb against the base of that middle picture, drawing Adam's eyes towards Grady's sideways glance. "Adam, I know I've had my doubts about his intentions in the past, but I know what you see in him. Maybe the question here is whether you think Grady and Miguel would mislead you on purpose? And if so, why?"

_If it's not about trust_, Adam thought, pressing fingers to his eyes. _If it's not about trust…_

He bent his head, rocking it left to right. "Teddy, on this issue, at this moment, Rafferty's as low on my list of suspects as anyone," he said. But the seed was already planted, rooting deep. After a moment, he shoved back and went to the door. "Rothman," he yelled, calling down the hall. "Change of plans."

**/**

**\**

tbc


	11. Chapter 11

**/**

**Chapter Eleven  
><strong>

**\**

_Sooner or later this is all going to go ka-boom. You know that right?_

_Kaboom._

_Ka. _

_Boom._

Grady dug knuckles into his eyes and shoved Miguel's voice out of his head, folding in on himself. He felt like a vagrant, crouched near the bricks in the alley off Piedmont, two blocks from the docks where he'd ended up after staying on the move most of the day. Miguel had found him a sweatshirt to wear and he had the hood pulled up, obscuring his face, making him feel kind of like a kid again, trying to hide in a foxhole.

The sensation was disorienting. His fingers kept itching into his pockets for that stupid picture of Beaudreaux—the one he used to show around the orphanage and the camp to prove to people that someone was still coming for him.

_This is my father_, he'd lie. And lie and lie and lie.

Stupid.

How naive had he been?

Flexing his fingers over his eyeballs, he made sparks flash under his eyelids. There was a low throb at the base of his skull that'd started pulsing in a steady beat sometime early that morning that wouldn't abate. He tried counting time to it, but his brain wouldn't keep track.

_Ka-boom, _he heard Miguel say again, in cadence to the thudding. Then…

_Pet-rov._

_And Pet-rov? _

_This Pet-rov guy?_

_This dude has a lot of power over you._

"Grady," said Miguel.

Grady yanked his knuckles from his eyes and shot a hand out, nails digging reflexively around cotton and flesh. When his eyes focused, Miguel was hunkered in front of him, frozen, one of his wrists caught tight in Grady's grip. Balanced on the balls of his feet, Miguel forced his position to look nearly as easy as standing on a sidewalk. Façade of calm on his face.

Involuntarily, and for no specific reason he could name, Grady flinched. Just once. As if to ward off a shiver. Then he held very still and didn't do it again. "Miguel," he acknowledged finally, letting go of his wrist and drawing his hand back, watching the blood return pigment to Miguel's skin through the capillaries.

Miguel rubbed at it slowly. "You with me?"

Sitting forward away from the bricks, Grady cleared his throat, wondering if one more _sorry_ could void the word. "Where are we?" he asked instead, and watched Miguel's face track his to see if he meant it literally or not. "Miguel," he prompted again.

Miguel's eyes held steady. "With some luck," he finally began, "we're where we've bought ourselves some time. Scolari and Chen Dao are on the move, but whether this goes too slow or too fast is going to depend on Rafferty's man Mahoney and whether or not Beaudreaux picks up the right trail. Even then…" He tipped his chin up with a frown. "Everything I've been hearing out there—this Petrov guy is _thee_ hombre escondido. A shadow. People are scared, and nobody seems to know his name."

_Pet-rov. _

_This Pet-rov guy. _

_Ka-boom._

Grady's mind ran with the echo. He grappled towards his pockets silently, feeling for the photo, before he remembered the stupidity of it and forced his hands to his sides, shaking slightly.

Miguel twitched his eyebrows. "Grady."

Grady ticked his gaze sideways, gathering his voice together in the back of his throat. "What about the other… thing?"

Checking both directions down the alley, Miguel slid his teeth together until they locked. Then, he sighed and reached behind him—under his shirt and into his belt. He drew out a mouse-gun and lifted into the air between them. A Beretta Bobcat with a wide, black grip. It dangled in Miguel's hand, pale afternoon light glinting off the short barrel.

Delicately, Miguel spoke. "I know you know how to use this," he said, "but I also know how you feel about it. Are you sure you want to take it?"

Grady reached for it, pressing the balance of his fingers against Miguel's. There were divisions here. Discord in code. Just the same, he pulled the gun fully into his own grip and dragged his knee up, working imprecisely to secure it to the ankle on his bad leg.

"And if they search you and find it?" pushed Miguel, watching him.

Easing down the cuff on his jeans, Grady answered, ignoring the hollowness in his own voice. "You said yourself—it's going to go sideways anyway."

"They'll kill you if they find it. You won't even get a shot off."

"It's not me he'll kill," he corrected, taking a breath.

Miguel bit his mouth closed but Grady could see the words trapped behind his teeth. "What?" he said.

Flexing his elbows out a little, Miguel shrugged. "It's just… this could go sideways faster than we expect. You can't even stand. That gun isn't going to do anything for you but get you in more trouble."

"I can stand," insisted Grady, stretching his leg out. His knee pulsed, stable as jelly.

"If you can stand, why do you need it?"

Grady didn't answer, moving instead to climb to his feet, trying to be subtle about bracing his ribs.

Miguel stood with him, tilting his head. A fraction of a fraction. "I should shadow for you."

"No," said Grady, bite in his voice like metal. "I've already involved you way more than I should have. You follow me—you get a bullet in your brain."

"This isn't like Nigel. I'm already in this."

"But it's still my problem." Grady swallowed against his windpipe, trying not to yell. Consciously, he relaxed his throat, and spoke with precision. "Miguel. When I leave here, as soon as you can put the call in, you do it, then you get the hell out. I shouldn't even be letting you do that much."

"You're not _letting_ me do anything."

"I _can't_ have you in the line of fire." Grady held a hand up. "Just… Please. Miguel. Please. Just tell me after you make the call, you'll go wherever you can to hide out for a while and you'll stay there. _Please_."

"I don't like it."

Catching his sleeve roughly, trying not to overbalance, Grady drew down on the material, shaking Miguel slightly, eyes dark and sincere. "You've done everything you can for me, man. Everything. I appreciate it more than I can say. Now _do_ this." He balanced back and held his hand out, waiting.

Miguel flicked his gaze silently at Grady's fingers, frowning. Finally, without changing expression, he hooked their palms, knuckles tightening to white around the base of his thumb.

Grady nodded in relief when he let go, thumbing his eyebrow as he turned away to move towards the street. He paused before he got there, knuckling the wall. "Hey, Miguel," he called back, turning around again. He swallowed. "If this doesn't work… tell Beaudreaux… Tell him I'm sorry, okay?"

Miguel blinked at him without changing expression. A stoic-chinned draw to the angle of his head. But after a moment he lowered his eyes in what seemed like a nod and Grady turned away and kept going.

**/**

**\**

Trang slung a skeptical stare in Grady's direction when he saw him, eyes lining at the corners, somewhere between amusement and disapproval. Settling hands in the pockets of his long jacket, he paced lazily from the roped post by the parking lot, towards the bay and back again.

Grady purposely tore his hand from the railing at his side and balanced himself, fingers loose. There was a hazy, otherworldly sensation slugging through his body, like a warning—like he was about to forget things he needed to remember if he didn't get a grip. "I'm here," he said. "I've kept the rules. I'm here, and Beaudreaux didn't find me. Just tell me where I need to go."

Trang turned back towards the water.

"What are we waiting for?" Grady growled.

Trang's smile became ambiguous, like a cat toying with a mouse. "Impatience? From you? Is there another appointment on your docket I don't know about? You'll know what you need to know when you need to know it. Just wait."

Clenching his jaw, Grady traced one line of woven rope framing the dock with his eyes, squinting into the distance at the fogged-out sun sitting low above the wide spread ocean. He slumped against the post behind him, leaning his weight away from his kneecap. His legs were trembling.

Feeling the jittery edge of pre-anxiety overtaking his muscles, he glanced at Trang's relaxed shoulders and swallowed tightly. For just one moment he felt that maybe he should prefer being back in the camps compared to this—that maybe it would have been better if he'd never made it out.

As soon as the thought appeared, he clamped down on it in panic—as if just thinking about it could make it happen—but it was already too late. The memory was suddenly inside his skin. Behind his eyes. He was somewhere far away, sitting next to a wired fence, clutching that stupid picture of Beaudreaux.

He could smell the burnt earth and thick air. He could feel the crumpled edge of the photo under his fingertips.

And he could hear Petrov speaking—an abstract passionless cadence without decipherable words. Like everything else Petrov brought to his memory, it was more shadow than form. A not-quite-clear conversation. An intangible fear.

The fog over the water drifted, splitting and thinning.

In the sudden glare of the sun, Grady blinked, bringing the bay back into focus. Out of his trance, he glanced at Trang to see if he'd noticed. Absently, he found himself patting his pockets, hands moving of their own accord, like it should be there. Like that photo wasn't already ten years gone. Maybe more. He'd carried it until it'd been in tatters, yellow at the edges with cracks and streaks through the faces, like broken ice.

He couldn't even remember where he'd lost it.

The rumble of a vehicle entering the empty parking lot behind them had him jerking around, barely registering that it was a patrol car before the brief jump of the car's siren sent his breathing into overdrive. "Relax," said Trang as the siren cut with the engine and two patrolmen stepped out. "They're with us."

Grady palmed his bruised ribs away from the frazzled edge of panic and dipped his head. This wasn't helping. He wasn't a kid. Petrov wasn't a ghost. And this wasn't Vietnam.

Jaw tensed and teeth aching, he closed his eyes and imagined the photo one last time. Every crack. Every tatter. When he had it clear enough, he rent it in his mind and tore the memory to pieces, then took the remnants and shoved them down deep inside a long dark box, where he wouldn't think of them again.

Grounding himself by feeling the pressure of the weapon at his ankle, he opened his eyes to the cement beneath his feet then lifted them to watch the officers' approach. In the midst of everything, he felt a needle prick of disappointment at the sight. It was an odd thing to hope for—that all of Beaudreaux's people really were good guys, that the faith B had in his system and his uniform could actually make it work. Then again, reality and Beaudreaux's faith had never quite been the same thing.

As they neared, he thought he recognized one of the officers, vaguely, but not the other. Neither seemed bothered by his presence and he took that as a bad sign. Petrov had made it clear he didn't like dots that connected. Not without intending to sever them. Maybe this cavalier meeting in front of him meant that the smashed piñata had finally run out of prizes. Maybe it meant he would get his death sentence after all. Maybe they all would.

"Patrols are covering the north ports," said the patrolman on the right, readjusting his hat while the other passed a piece of paper into Trang's hand. "That's the duty roster for the remainder of the day, straight from the commissioner. You're clear from dock 17 down."

"And Sergeant Beaudreaux?" questioned Trang.

Grady held his breath.

"Following some lead on something going down with Rafferty—seemed to spend most of the night on that."

"That and looking for that kid," said the other.

"What kid?" asked Trang.

"Mendez, I think. Miguel or Manny or something—some gangbanger—one of the sergeant's projects. Had an APB on him at least half the night. Didn't seem to turn anything up though."

Trang glanced at Grady, and though Grady's heart was pounding, he froze his features into poker-faced neutrality. He thought too late to try to close his eyes. They never held the lie as long as he needed them to.

"Miguel," said Trang with a lazy smile. "Mendez?"

"Yeah," said the officer. "And we did like you said and called that girl of his at the bar he owns—couple times last night. She kept thinking we were him." He jerked his head in Grady's direction, vaguely dismissive. "Just kept asking where he was. Didn't seem to have a clue about much else."

"Thank you," said Trang, smiling placidly, folding the paper in half before handing the officers an envelope. "You've been very helpful."

**/**

**\**

The sun was below the horizon and the waterfront had melted to grey.

After hours.

The dock house Grady had his back pressed into had no stairs. Just a long platform tilting around towards an entryway set into a wall with thick double-paned windows and no railing. He glanced behind him, up the boarded slope, seeking Trang's position without finding it—and wishing like hell he'd been smarter and kept Miguel out of this.

He imagined the conversation between Trang and Petrov reporting the information from the officers. He imagined watching the unraveling threads lead from Miguel to Malloy, to Beaudreaux, back to the people in the cages and to him.

He shuddered.

In the end it was just one more thing he couldn't control.

Getting to it, and hoping he could steady his hands enough to jimmy the lock, he got a grip on the main door handle and felt his vision blur, the throbbing in his skull increasing in rhythm.

_No_, he thought, breathing to find his center through his hissing of the word. _No. No. No._ He couldn't lose it yet. Not yet.

A sound came from behind him—the delicate tap of boots on wood. He turned just in time for the taser to nail him in the chest. This time, he didn't tumble off the edge of anything. The jolt dropped him to the deck hard—stole his breath and set his ears to ringing. His vision greyed as he fought for oxygen, fading out as a shadowed figure stood over him, distinction of form lost in the haze of his confusion.

"You're too slow for this one," a voice said with a lilt of accent. Italian maybe, but he couldn't tell for certain. Warm fingers reached down and patted his face just as the air came back to his lungs. "Too slow, indeed," continued the voice. "I think it might be time your boss and me had a little chat."

Grady gasped. "I don't… have a boss," he whispered, even as he thought _Pet-rov_, and hated himself for it.

_Ka-boom._

It was unraveling—the whole grasping-at-threads plan fraying into a pile of messy strings. He coughed and filled his lungs. "I don't have a boss."

**/**

**\**

tbc


	12. Chapter 12

**/**

**Chapter Twelve **

**\**

_Change of plans_, cursed Miguel, roughening the palms of his hands on the coarse rope railing in front of him. As though he'd really expected this to go right. As if anything could go right with any of this.

Crouched in the shadows above the harbor moorings, he forced himself silent, and forced himself still. A skill long acquired—the skill to watch when he wanted to scream, and stay motionless when he wanted to beat his fists. There were five men on the dock. All with weapons. Standing in quiet argument over Grady's boneless sprawl.

He knew Grady was alive because he'd seen him struggle up onto his elbows before the man he assumed to be Trang had toed him over onto his stomach and used his gun to direct one of the two guys who'd taser'd him to wrap a blindfold three times around his head. But there'd been a moment, when he'd seen Grady go down…

The two other men who'd gone out on the dock after that—two men who'd driven up in black town cars—looked Slavic enough to fit Miguel's theories about Petrov being Russian mob, but it was all guesswork. He'd also heard rumors that Old Kim was pulling new strings from his prison cell and that maybe these men worked for him.

All he really knew was they were with Trang, and Grady with them.

Hitching his elbows farther over his knees he scuffed his shoes to the edge of the base plank. He was too far away to hear what was being said, and too near to peel his eyes away. Locking his arms over the rope, he tucked his shoulder into the wood posting, watching as Trang waved Scolari's guys into the car ahead of him. Watching as Trang forsook his gun and used quick hands to deflect an attack and then whack one of Scolari's guys across the temple when he made an attempt to turn the tables.

The brutal way Grady was dragged upright and dumped into the back of the other vehicle shortly after set Miguel's muscles on fire but he kept watching and waited.

When the engine rumbled and the men moved out, so did Miguel, making his way along the fencing away from the dock as a foghorn blew in the distance. He stayed low until he hit the stretch of parking spaces by the burnt-out wharf pole lights, looking for the payphone in the darkness.

When he clocked it, he dropped three quarters, two dimes, and a nickel into the slot at the top with deliberately steady fingers and made four phone calls.

The first was to the number given him for Patrick Mahoney. As Rafferty's right hand, Mahoney wasn't much of a talker, but he had the same skills in diplomacy Rafferty himself embodied. Being direct without issuing intent. Innocent in appearance. And good with deflection.

"They started at Dock 13," Miguel said shortly when the call was picked up. "Scolari's guys were already there. Looks like they're being taken on a little trip."

"Noted," said Mahoney, a brutish undertow to his thick accent that was subtle in the bleed of just one word, but strong and dangerous all the same. "And I wouldn't worry about the Shadow Dragons getting in the way—they were busted this morning on the south side pier. Unless of course that means you've lost one of your chess pieces."

Miguel bent his head and rapped the phone once against his skull, silently. "You're getting information from the task force?"

"Don't sound so surprised, lad. General information is easy. It's the right kind of information that's difficult."

"Right," Miguel said, breathing to bring his mind steady. "On that subject—I gave you the right kind of information. Now I need you to give me the right kind of information. If you have the primary location, I need the address."

"That wasn't part of the deal."

"It wasn't not part of the deal either. You wouldn't have it if it weren't for me. In fact, I didn't have to come to you at all."

"And yet you did. With good reason. Am I right there, boyo?"

Silence. Miguel swallowed, then crushed his voice into something solid and calm. "The clock is running down. Now with Scolari's guys showing up, things have changed. I need to try to get my friend out."

"That's not likely to be an easy task."

"Which isn't your concern. But the point of the exercise is to calm the heat in the city and get back to business as usual. I don't get my friend out, I guarantee you that won't happen."

Mahoney cleared his throat in a way that sounded like a chuckle. "I didn't say it when you came to us before, but your name's not unfamiliar to us. Our Mr. Rafferty does his best to keep track of the factions in the neighborhoods and I'm starting to agree with him on one small point—your talents are wasted on a street gang."

Miguel bit his teeth together. He forced himself silent and forced himself still. "I pull for a different gang now—_ése_."

"So I've heard." Mahoney paused. "I know what you're doing. Don't imagine I don't. We'll play our part. Just remember what happens to those who make deals with the devil and don't keep them, Mr. Mendez."

"I'll remember," Miguel responded, making the syllables come out staccato slow. Then he scrambled through his pockets for a piece of paper to get down the information Mahoney was giving him without making it sound like he was scrambling. When he had it, he hung up the phone and closed his eyes against the plastic casing.

Honor and promises aside, Grady had come into K-Street territory to keep Miguel alive when he'd been smacked back onto the G-Rock's hit list. Now that it was his turn, Miguel couldn't picture himself hiding in a hole to wait this out, then going back to Beaudreaux, or Malloy—or to look himself in the mirror—just to say he'd waited it all out back at Luis's or the rec center.

Pulling the phone off its cradle, he ran his fingers over the stiff metal coil below, then dialed three more times. The piñata was out of prizes. The city behind him was stacked with dynamite and he was starting to think the only chance Grady had—the only flare he could send to Beaudreaux—might be to light the fuse.

**/**

**\**

Sometime between the scattered offerings of vending machine snacks early that morning and the hotdogs Adam and Kelsey had brought back for lunch, Rothman had fallen asleep at his desk and gotten a paper clip stuck to his forehead. Adam hadn't had the energy to tell him about it, and four hours later it was still there, plastered over the frown in his eyebrow as he flipped through notes and papers at his desk.

Adam stared at it as he hung up his phone and made another notation of his own—crossing off one more clinic he believed hadn't seen Grady.

Capping the pen in his hands, he rattled it against his desktop, then rocked back in his chair and shoved the map of the city he had spread out before him towards Willis. There were green marks highlighting all the areas Miguel and Grady hadn't turned up in since they'd gone missing. During his shove, they bunched together, creating scattered blotches of nothing, and nothing, and more nothing.

_That's for leaving me in Da Lat!_

He rubbed his jaw, feeling it ache. Feeling the adrenaline surge below his sternum.

_I checked every orphanage in Da Lat! _

_(Every orphanage. Every hospital. Every graveyard.)_

_Help me, Beaudreaux. Help me!_

Bending his neck, Adam gave a sharp shake of his head and rapped his knuckles into the top of his desk, breaking the echoing voice between his ears into a thousand whispering shards.

Willis glanced sideways, but didn't say anything. Instead, he folded the map over gently, pushed it out of his space, and resumed searching through his own stack of information.

With a jump in his jaw muscle, Adam stood, and sighed, settling his hands around the small of his back. "Hey," he said after a moment, trying to infuse the sound of apology in the word. "I think I'm going to go stretch my legs. You want a coffee?"

Willis eyed him. "Sure," he agreed.

Adam turned, shoes heavy on the linoleum floor. "Hey, Rothman—coffee?"

"Yeah, okay," Rothman answered absently, flipping another page on the notes in front of him, shirtsleeves rolled at the elbows, wrinkled beyond all recovery.

Shaking his head, Adam rounded his desk just as Malloy stepped through the bullpen doors. Their eyes met and she stopped, adjusting the bag in her hand and the purse strap on her shoulder. Adam frowned, closing the gap between them and taking her by the arms. "Malloy, what are you doing here? Have you heard something from Grady?"

She jerked her chin in the negative, leaning into his hands then straightening back wearily. "No. No, sorry. I just couldn't stay at the bar any longer." Diverting her gaze towards the officers walking through the hallway behind her she lowered her voice and asked, "What about you? Should you really be working here?"

"We're managing," he sighed. "Pine's had most of the duty roster posted out while we've been here. The Shadow Dragons were busted this morning, and with the processing needs, they're shorthanded across the city anyway. We're staying away from computers, limiting physical reports…"

"Still not sure where the leaks are coming from?"

"Or where they're going," he confirmed. "Beyond that…" He dropped his hands then rubbed his neck, kneading fingers at the near junction of shoulder and spine. "Let's just say I'm trying to take your advice and trust Grady on this one."

Her eyebrows wrinkled and she started to open her mouth.

Adam put his hands back on her arms, not wanting to get into it. An officer's radio squawked gratingly down by the booking desk and a hollow mumble of laughter leapt through the squeaky doors from the unit occupied by Vice. A cacophony of tension pushing in on his bones. He was standing in a glass box bracing for the worst. He didn't want Malloy in there with him. "Malloy, if you couldn't stay at the bar, then you should have gone home. You look like you haven't slept a wink."

"Ha, you're one to talk," she returned, but it lacked her usual playfulness, carrying instead a sort of dead, monotone quality, clipped with sarcasm. She dropped the bag on the empty desk next to her. "Sandwiches," she explained. "I figured if nothing else, I could make sure you guys ate."

Adam breathed, pushing fingers to his eyelids.

"Don't start, Adam. I can't go home. I can't sleep. And I can't run the bar. Not tonight. Not when…"

He followed her momentum and re-gripped her shoulders, drawing her farther away from the noise in the hallway. "I know," he said. "I know."

She slumped. "No sign of Grady at all?"

He shook his head.

"Well, what have you found?" she asked, glancing over his shoulder. "And what's Willis doing here?"

"He wanted to help."

"Then let me help too. Come on, Adam. There's got to be something. Tell me what I can do."

Sighing heavily, he led her towards his desk, rolling out the chair with the squeaky wheels for her to sit in while he made eye contact with Willis.

"Hey there, Malloy," Willis greeted, in the way he had of being serious and wry at the same time. "Welcome to the madhouse."

"Ah ha!" Rothman suddenly bolted upright, smiling, the paperclip toppling from his eyebrow with the change of his expression. He blinked at it for a moment in confusion, but shook it off, rounding his desk with a pad a paper in his fist and a pencil stuck behind his ear.

"Got something?" asked Adam.

"Maybe," answered Rothman. "Still nothing on the financials, and as of right now Rafferty is still holed up in his warehouse." He leaned in as the group clustered close. "But, I might have figured out what Miguel was hoping we would catch onto." He set his notes on Adam's desk then shuffled half a step over to yank the city map from where Willis had left it folded, and spread it out next to his pad.

"Miguel?" Malloy looked at Adam. "What's he talking about?"

"I'll explain in a minute. Go on," said Adam, nodding at Rothman.

Rothman took the pencil from his ear and tapped the map, drawing a thin line around the fingers of water that pushed in on the north side of the city. "Very abruptly this morning, Rafferty began making inquiries up and down the city coastline looking for any significant waterfront properties bought, sold, or rented since just before the Foley shooting."

Adam straightened, feeling a sharpening in his spine. He glanced at the doorway to make sure it was empty. "Rafferty has a lead," he concluded.

"Wait a minute," said Malloy. "Lead on what?"

"If there is a new player in town and Rafferty is looking for him," Rothman continued to explain, "somehow—and I'm not going to speculate on how—he has enough information to know that this new player has set up shop using waterfront property, and enough specifics on that property to narrow it down to factory and warehouse zones. As much as that may seem like a needle in a haystack around here, he may have hit paydirt. Kelsey just called in. Rafferty's man Mahoney visited three different city registrars this afternoon. Near as she could tell he was checking land access and property rights for the old fish canneries on the north inland sound."

"Those haven't been in operation for years," said Willis.

"They haven't," agreed Adam. "Which means that whole area is probably one of the few places a new group could set up operations without immediately tipping off any of the established crime factions." He scratched at a pulsing spot behind his ear, trying to nudge his thoughts into a straight line. "Any sign of movement on those properties? Can you trace a buyer?"

"No. And, Sarge," Rothman hesitated, tweaking the corner of the paper under his hand as he glanced up from the low angle of his head, "I'm not sure that we should."

Adam frowned.

"Hear me out," said Rothman. "I've been thinking about this. We've had eyes on Rafferty all day, all night. If Grady is involved in the break-ins, it's not through Rafferty. But Miguel, and presumably Grady, put you on this path for a reason."

The wood in Willis's chair creaked. He leaned forward, giving Adam a look.

"But why not give us a more direct rout?" continued Rothman. He seemed to realize his voice had been building and curbed it, dropping it low again. "The day Grady came here to talk to you, he had something specific to tell you, I'm sure of it. And he was scared, I'm sure of that too. Then, he stopped talking, we started working the case, and eventually we found out…"

"That our investigation was being compromised," finished Adam, shaking his head slightly. "You think Grady knew about the leak."

"Maybe. More than that, Sarge. When we consider everything else—his behavior with you, his behavior at the bar. Either way you look at it there's got to be more to his silence than meets the eye. And it stands to reason that if he's at all mixed up in this mess and we're being watched…"

"Then so is he." Adam bowed his head into his fist and gave his forehead a small tap, knocking it once. He shoved the map aside again, unearthing the photos of Grady at the dock. Leaving them flat on the hard surface, he shuffled them around, zeroing in on the one in the middle. Grady's sideways stare at a man faced away from the camera.

Depicted in black and white, Grady looked like a memory. Standing right there in Adam's own city, yet somehow a million miles away.

"He's not just being watched, he's being threatened," Adam mumbled.

Suddenly, fingers settled next to his and slid the photo away from him. "I've seen this jacket before," said Malloy. She pointed to the hood on the person Grady was looking at. "That man was at the bar, yesterday. He came in just before Grady went on shift. He was in the back booth drinking wine. He was there until Grady left the bar."

Adam stared at her, a prickling sensation stirring low on the back of his neck as he thought back, trying to bring the man into memory. "Are you sure?" he asked. He'd been so focused on Grady, had he even paid attention to the patrons?

Malloy opened her mouth and gave a helpless shrug. "Well, no actually. This isn't the greatest photo, but that looks like the same jacket—long, with a hood, same markings down the arm." She closed her eyes for a moment. "Grady was being watched?"

Palms still braced on the desktop, Adam glanced from Rothman to Willis and nodded slowly. "It makes sense. As much as any of this makes sense," he said. "I can't believe he…" He bowed his head and shook it, not even sure what he was going to say. _Can't believe they didn't notice? Can't believe Grady played them all so well? Can't believe he didn't protect him better?_

"Whatever got us here," Rothman said softly, bringing Adam's attention back to him, "I think Miguel and Grady gave us Rafferty because they knew it would get us in the right direction without tipping off the wrong people. Which makes me think we should avoid tipping off the wrong people too, until we know what we're dealing with."

"Maybe, but we can't just do nothing."

"I know, but—"

"Adam," said Malloy. She folded her elbows onto the desk. "There's one more thing. Someone kept calling the bar last night. All night. At first, I thought it was Grady, but…"

Adam straightened up. "What do you mean? Someone threatened you?"

"No. No, it wasn't like that. No heavy breathing. Nothing. The caller never even said anything. If it wasn't Grady, I thought it was just a prank call, or the wrong number. It still might have been just that, but now with this…" She waved a hand at the mess on his desk and back at Rothman.

"Malloy, why didn't you tell me about this when it happened?"

"I knew you were already stressed. I wanted you to focus on Grady. I didn't think it would help anything to tell you about it and I didn't think anything could really be done about it if I did."

Lacing his fingers, Adam locked them on the back of his neck, breathing out slowly.

"You said you thought Grady might be trying to protect someone," said Willis, briefly setting a hand on Malloy's arm. "I hate to say it, but at this point, isn't it safest to assume there's a threat?"

"What do you want to do here, Sarge?"

Unlocking his fingers and dropping them back to brace his arms against the desk, Adam ignored the question, trying to just process. Back in his room, Grady had told him that this was not about trust. And before he'd bolted, he'd told him if he'd wanted his help, he would have asked for it. Anchoring himself with a steadying breath, Adam was starting to think maybe this was about trust after all, and maybe Grady was asking for his help the only way he could.

"Sarge?" Rothman prompted.

"We play along," said Adam, expression pulled tight. He looked at Malloy. "You were right. For whatever reason, Grady believes he can't come to me on this. If I'm getting a picture of anything here, at the very least he thinks by staying away he might be protecting us. Frustrated as I am, I have to… I have to trust he has a good reason. And I can't ask him to trust me if I don't trust him." He switched focus to Rothman. "If he wants us on Rafferty, we play this hand out. We play it his way." Subconsciously, he reached for the weapon in his shoulder holster, rechecking the clip as he nodded at the map and the circle Rothman had drawn. "That info is pointing us there."

"How do we work it?" asked Rothman, bending in on his elbows. "If we try to move in now, we still don't know where we're leaking. Not to mention, there's more than one old factory on the sound."

Adam sat and rolled his chair in closer, keeping his voice low. "We start tactics and mobilization procedures, but we keep up the ruse. We know there's another player, but as far as anyone outside this circle knows, it's Rafferty we're pursuing and just Rafferty. Beyond that, I'm open to suggestion."

"Kelsey's out there," said Rothman. "She's got Officer's Alvarez and Reese with her. We're certain we can trust them. Let them stay on Mahoney and Rafferty. If they move in on the sound, which seems likely, so do we. But we roll no squad cars. No lights, no sirens. Or better yet, we pull in some forestry maintenance vehicles—they roll by those factories all the time because of the parklands nearby."

Adam gave him a steady look, warning but appreciative as he told him things he already knew. "We'll be going in blind. We have no idea what we're facing… who we're facing, or what we're even walking into. It could be a trap. It could be anything."

"Job's always been a risk, Sarge. We didn't expect that murdered family last week either. This is the job."

Suddenly there was a light knocking on the entryway. They turned their heads as Lieutenant Pine stepped in. "Do I get to be in on this, Sergeant?"

Sweeping his glance into the hallway beyond to see whom else might be around, Adam stood again. He left his fingers pressed on the map's surface as he nodded him closer and spoke. "It's a gamble right now, Charlie."

"What do you need, Adam?"

Adam breathed. "A safe location for Malloy to stay and your best guess on who can be trusted right now in the department and the task force. We need them ready to mobilize. Location doesn't go out until the last possible second."

"You have enough information to make it credible?"

Adam glanced at Rothman who nodded his head. "We're just waiting for the call from Kelsey."

"Okay, suit up," said Pine. "We'll make it happen. Adam. It's not a long list I'm afraid."

"At this point, Charlie, we'll take what we can get." He looked from Malloy to Willis, then back to Rothman and Pine. "Let's go."

**/**

**\**

Standing in the hollow spot near his dented locker, Adam absently smoothed on his bulletproof vest, reworking the seams on the straps until the fit was right—right and smooth as he prepared to move in on a location Grady may or may not even be. Pulling his shirt over the top, he paused and rubbed his face. A dull halogenic glow diffused under his closed eyelids. An eerie blank canvas for him to rub his thumbs against.

"Something tells me it's not just last night that you didn't get a lot of sleep."

Adam opened his eyes to find Willis was leaning a shoulder to the corner of the locker row. "You always were intuitive," he replied.

Willis came closer. "You have been having that dream again haven't you? Same as before? Grady in the jungle and you can't get to him?"

"Almost." He shifted, sitting on the bench and pulling his shoulder holster back on. He rubbed at his jaw. "I just… I can't shake this feeling, Teddy."

"What feeling is that?"

"That this may be it. I've lost him again and I'm not going to find him in time."

**/**

**\**

tbc


End file.
